Tag: Irwin Shaw

Cynan Jones, Mischa Andriessen, John Steinbeck, Ruy Belo, Lawrence Durrell, André Roy, Elisabeth Borchers, James T. Farrell, Irwin Shaw

De Welshe schrijver Cynan Jones werd geboren op 27 februari 1975 in Aberystwyth, Wales. Zie ook alle tags voor Cynan Jones op dit blog.

Uit: The Long Dry

“He comes in, scraping his feet on the metal grill outside the back door, not because he needs to, but from habit. Or perhaps it is his announcement—a signal they have always had but never spoken of. They had many of these when they were younger.
She rinses the cafetière and warms the cup with water from the kettle, which she’s boiled several times while she has waited for him. She does not make the coffee. Some things she mustn’t do. She’s threatened by the coffee, about how strong to make it, how it tastes when it is made. He makes coffee every day, just for himself as no one else drinks it. He makes a strong potful of coffee at this time of the morning and it does him for the day, warming up the cupfuls in a pan as they are needed, which makes them stronger as the day goes on. No one else touches the pan. She says it’s why he does not sleep. His first coffee each morning is the remnants of the night before because he does not want to wake the house grinding the beans, and the children sleep above the thin ceiling of the kitchen.
He sits at the table with a loose fist and runs his thumb over the first joint of his forefinger in the way he has, so it makes a quiet purring sound, like rubbing leather.
“What about the dosing?”
“It’ll have to wait,” he says.
He rubs his finger. He does this always at the table, talking or reading a paper, even with the handle of a cup held there, so that this part of his finger is smooth and shines. Whenever he’s at rest.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve checked the obvious places and she’s not there. She’s got her head down and gone.”
He does not tell her about the stillborn calf.
“It’s typical. It has to be today,” she says. “I should have gotten up to check.”
“She would have gone anyway,” he says quietly.
He looks down at the missing part of his little finger on his right hand and makes the sound against his thumb again. She still blames herself for this damage to him. He was trying to free the bailer from the new tractor and she had done something and the catch had just bit down. He takes a mouthful of coffee. It was a clean cut and it healed well and he could have lost his hand instead. That’s how he looks at it. In some ways he loves it.”

 


Cynan Jones (Aberystwyth, 27 februari 1975)

 

De Nederlandse dichter Mischa Andriessen werd geboren in Apeldoorn op 27 februari 1970. Zie ook alle tags voor Mischa Andriessen op dit blog.

 

De vogelkoning

Het zijn normaal jonge jongens.
In de lente verlaten ze hun huizen
halsoverkop, alsof iemand hen riep.
Wie overleeft, herinnert zich niet
wat het was – het zachte wieken
van wijd uitgestrekte vleugels
een stille roep, zoals stenen zingen
in de hoofden van krankzinnigen.
Van sommigen zijn de vaders
eerder gegaan, er is geen kaart
een richting, geen route; soms
komt er een aan, keert terug
naar waar hij eens vertrok
vertelt het na, vervormd, gehavend
kleren tot op de draad kapot
de blik spreekt louter waanzin:
Een arendsnest op de rotsen
weggedraaide ogen, paarse lippen
heel het gastpad afgedwaald
om weer hier te zijn.
De mare wil dat ze luisteren.

 

Portaal

Vader stond buiten voor de deur.
De zoon stuurde hem weg, wachtte
lange dagen tot hij terugkwam
verjaagde hem telkens opnieuw
maar keek bij elke terugkeer langer
prentte zijn trekken in als zocht hij
ten slotte iets om zich te kunnen herinneren.
Toen vader toch weer op het tuinpad stond
schoot hij ogenblikkelijk zijn jas aan, ging
naar buiten, trok de deur achter zich dicht.
Ze liepen samen op, kenden de richting.

 


Mischa Andriessen (Apeldoorn, 27 februari 1970)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver John Steinbeck werd geboren in Salinas, Californië, op 27 februari 1902. Zie ook alle tags voor John Steinbeck op dit blog.

Uit: The Grapes of Wrath

“And all the time the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. And there were pitifully few farmers on the land any more. And the imported serfs were beaten and frightened and starved until some went home again, and some grew fierce and were killed or driven from the country. And farms grew larger and the owners fewer.
And the crops changed. Fruit trees took the place of grain fields, and vegetables to feed the world spread out on the bottoms: lettuce, cauliflower, artichokes, potatoes–stoop crops. A man may stand to use a scythe, a plow, a pitchfork; but he must crawl like a bug between the rows of lettuce, he must bend his back and pull his long bag between the cotton rows, he must go on his knees like a penitent across a cauliflower patch.
And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it. And some of the farms grew so large that one man could not even conceive of them any more, so large that it took batteries of bookkeepers to keep track of interest and gain and loss; chemists to test the soil, to replenish; straw bosses to see that the stooping men were moving along the rows as swiftly as the material of their bodies could stand. Then such a farmer really became a storekeeper, and kept a store. He paid the men, and sold them food, and took the money back. And after a while he did not pay the men at all, and saved bookkeeping. “These farms gave food on credit. A man might work and feed himself; and when the work was done, he might find that he owed money to the company. And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.
And then the dispossessed were drawn west–from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand.”

 


John Steinbeck (27 februari 1902 – 20 december 1968)
Poster voor de gelijknamige film uit 1940

 

De Portugese dichter, vertaler en essayist Ruy de Moura Belo werd geboren op 27 februari 1933 in São João da Ribeira, nabij Rio Maior. Zie ook alle tags voor Ruy Belo op dit blog.

 

Anniversary Mass

It’s been one year since your steps
last walked in our parish
Where do you who belonged to these fields
whose wheat is again turning ripe
belong now?
What’s your new name?
Can there be a more unusual weekend
than a saturday like this one that never ends?
How do you fill your time
now that all the time ahead of you is free?
What sort of steps might take you
behind the cooing of a dove in our skies?
Why have you never again had a birthday
even though the table is set and waiting for you
and the mulberry trees along the road are in bloom again?

That’s what his voice was like that’s how he talked
says the yellow-flowered broom that grows here
and that saw him walk on the pathways of childhood
next to his first flight of partridges

Now only in our neckties do we take you who are dead
to those paths where you left the mark of your feet
Only in our neckties. Your death
has stopped dressing us up completely
The summer you departed I clearly remember
thinking profound things
It’s summer again. You have ever less place
in this corner of us where every year
we will piously unearth you
Until the death of your death

 

Vertaald door Richard Zenith

 


Ruy Belo (27 februari 1933 – 8 augustus 1978)
Cover

 

De Britse dichter en schrijver Lawrence George Durrell werd geboren op 27 februari 1912 in Jalandhar in India. Zie ook alle tags voor Lawrence Durrell op dit blog.

Uit: Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will — whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures — and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection … These thoughts belong to Venice at dawn, seen from the deck of the ship which is to carry me down through the islands to Cyprus; a Venice wobbling in a thousand fresh-water reflections, cool as a jelly. It was as if some great master, stricken by dementia, had burst his whole colour-box against the sky to deafen the inner eye of the world. Cloud and water mixed into each other, dripping with colours, merging, overlapping, liquefying, with steeples and balconies and roofs floating in space, like the fragments of some stained-glass window seen through a dozen veils of ricepaper. Fragments of history touched with the colours of wine, tar, ochre, blood, fire-opal and ripening grain. The whole at the same time being rinsed softly back at the edges into a dawn sky as softly as circumspectly blue as a pigeon’s egg. Mentally I held it all, softly as an abstract painting, cradling it in my thoughts — the whole encampment of cathedrals and palaces, against the sharply-focused face of Stendhal as he sits forever upon a stiff-backed chair at Florian’s sipping wine: or on that of a Corvo, flitting like some huge fruit-bat down these light-bewitched alleys … The pigeons swarm the belfries. I can hear their wings across the water like the beating of fans in a great summer ballroom. The vaporetto on the Grand Canal beats too, softly as a human pulse, faltering and renewing itself after every hesitation which marks a landing-stage. The glass palaces of the Doges are being pounded in a crystal mortar, strained through a prism. Venice will never be far from me in Cyprus — for the lion of Saint Mark still rides the humid airs of Famagusta, of Kyrenia. It is an appropriate point of departure for the traveller to the eastern Levant … But heavens, it was cold. Down on the grey flagged quay I had noticed a coffee-stall which sold glasses of warm milk and croissants. It was immediately opposite the gang-plank, so that I was in no danger of losing my ship. A small dark man with a birdy eye served me wordlessly, yawning in my face, so that in sympathy I was forced to yawn too. I gave him the last of my liras. There were no seats, but I made myself comfortable on an upended barrel and, breaking my bread into the hot milk, fell into a sleepy contemplation of Venice from this unfamiliar angle of vision across the outer harbour. A tug sighed and spouted a milky jet upon the nearest cloud.”

 


Lawrence Durrell (27 februari 1912 – 7 november 1990)
Cover

 

De Canadese dichter, schrijver en essayist André Roy werd geboren op 27 februari 1944 in Montréal. Zie ook alle tags van André Roy op dit blog.

 

Het is nog nacht

Het is nog nacht
de actieve droom,
de machine van actie;
de nacht in de bossen, de woestijnen, de steden.
Ik droomde van twee werelden:
een, zichtbaar en sterfelijk;
de andere, onzichtbaar, met fantomen
moe sinds de geboorte.
Ik observeer, ik zie de dans van de tijd,
de criminelen die ’s nachts terugkwamen.

 

In de nacht houden wij ons op

In de nacht houden wij ons op
jij, ik, wij, de anderen, die zijn zoals wij.
Nogmaals de actie,
de structuur van het denken in actie.
Moderne wereld van bossen en water.
Je behoort tot de reizende kooplieden,
onze voorouders de vampieren.
De steden, de huizen, de bedden,
waar we ons mysterieus, onmogelijk,
onsterfelijk waanden
wat een waanzin!
Het verlangen stroomt;
we zouden onszelf kunnen doden
voor de kennis van het verlangen.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

 
André Roy (Montréal, 27 februari 1944)

 

De Duitse schrijfster en dichteres Elisabeth Borchers werd geboren in Homberg op 27 februari 1926. Zie ook alle tags voor Elisabeth Borchers op dit blog.

 

Niemand behaupte

Niemand behaupte
ich sei taub.
Allabendlich höre ich
die Unrast der Sterne.

Niemand behaupte
ich sei blind oder lahm.
Ich nehme Stock und Stein
bis zum jähen Ereignis.

Niemand behaupte
ich hätte zu träumen versäumt.
Ich werde nicht nach Tibet reisen
und auch nicht nach Tanger.
Mir träumte
ich fände den Weg
nicht zurück.

 

An ein Kind

Wenn wir lange genug warten,
dann wird es kommen.
Heute noch, fragt das Kind.
Heut oder morgen. Ein Schiff,
mußt du wissen, braucht Zeit.
So weit und breit wie das Meer.
Dann bist du groß.
Dann steigen wir ein
und machen die Reise.
Zusammen. Wir beide.
Und jeder auf seine Weise.

 


Elisabeth Borchers (27 februari 1926 – 25 september 2013)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Thomas Farrell werd geboren op 27 februari 1904 in Chicago. Zie ook alle tags voor James T. Farrell op dit blog.

Uit: Father and Son

“When he’d come home, Bill was there, white and scared. But he hadn’t hit him. He’d talked to Bill like a father. Lizz had gone to see McCarthy, the police sergeant whose boys played with Bill and Danny, and McCarthy had quashed it all. He’d paid for the pocketbook, and it was all forgotten. After that, Bill had settled down. Now, you couldn’t want for a decenter boy. He looked at his leathery face in the mirror. He washed it, dried himself, cleaned out the wash bowl, and left the bathroom. He put on his khaki shirt, passed through the small hallway to the dining room, and was ready to eat. The dining-room table was covered with dishes and papers. In the center of it there was a large glass cake-dish, which contained crumbs and a stale chunk of cake. Lizz pushed dishes aside and set coffee, sugar buns, and a plate of ham and eggs before him. She wore an old apron and had a rag tied under her chin. She looked sloppy. Jim pitched into the ham and eggs. “I was over to see my mother yesterday,” Lizz remarked, sitting down to talk with him. He nodded, but said nothing. He bit into a sugar bun. He was waiting to see whether or not she’d had another scrap with her people. “Mother said that Al isn’t well,” she said. “You wouldn’t think he would be, having a doctor like Mike Geraghty,” Jim said, suddenly bitter. His face clouded. He remembered his Little Arty, now three years dead. All their good luck had to come after Arty was long since dead. He wiped up the yolk from the plate with a bun and ate it, and then he shoved his plate aside and handed Lizz his cup for more coffee. She returned with a filled cup and sat down. “Lizz, it’s a long time since the little fellow left us. You really ought to take off your mourning. If you do that you won’t be sad so often. You have to let time heal old wounds,” he said, his voice kindly. “Oh, Jim, I see the children playing on Calumet Avenue, and it breaks my heart. Not one of them is as beautiful as our Arty was.” “Come on now, Lizz, we’ve got to brace up. We’ve got lots to be thankful for, even with the tough breaks we had in the past,” he said, but the image of little Arty stood in his mind, a lovely, light-haired boy in a dirty dress, staring with those wonderful sad eyes and saying “Fither.” Lizz wiped her eyes with her apron. “Jim, I can’t help it. I look at our new house and I think of him. Oh, how he would have loved it. He’d be going to school this year or next. Everywhere I see, Jim, makes me think of him. I can’t help it. I can’t take off my mourning,” she said in tears.”

 

 
James T. Farrell (27 februari 1904 – 22 augustus 1979)
Cover

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irwin Shaw werd geboren op 27 februari 1913 als Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in New York. Zie alle tags voor Irwin Shaw op dit blog.

Uit: Rich Man, Poor Man

“Boylan was standing at the bar in his tweed topcoat, staring at his glass, when Rudolph came down the little flight of steps from Eighth Street, carrying the overnight bag. There were only men standing at the bar and most of them were probably fairies. “I see you have the bag,” Boylan said. “She didn’t want it.” “And the dress?” “She took the dress.” “What are you drinking?” “A beer, please.” “One beer, please,” Boylan said to the bartender. “And I’ll continue with whiskey.” Boylan looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. His eyebrows were blonder than they had been last week. His face was very tan, as though he had been lying on a southern beach for months. Two or three of the fairies at the bar were equally brown. Rudolph knew about the sun lamp by now. “I make it a point to look as healthy and attractive as I can at all times,” Boylan had explained to Rudolph. “Even if I don’t see anybody for weeks on end. It’s a form of self-respect.” Rudolph was so dark, anyway, that he felt he could respect himself without a sun lamp. The bartender put the drinks down in front of them. Boylan’s fingers trembled a little as he picked up his glass. Rudolph wondered how many whiskies he had had. “Did you tell her I was here?” Boylan asked. “Yes.” “Is she coming?” “No. The man she was with wanted to come and meet you, but she didn’t.” There was no point in not being honest. “Ah,” Boylan said. “The man she was with.” “She’s living with somebody.” “I see,” Boylan said flatly. “It didn’t take long, did it?” Rudolph drank his beer. “Your sister is an extravagantly sensual woman,” Boylan said. “I fear for where it may lead her.” Rudolph kept drinking his beer. “They’re not married, by any chance?” “No. He’s still married to somebody else.” Boylan looked at himself in the mirror again for a while. A burly young man in a black turtle-neck sweater down the bar caught his eye in the glass and smiled. Boylan turned away slightly, toward Rudolph. “What sort of fellow is he? Did you like him?” “Young,” Rudolph said. “He seemed nice enough. Full ofjokes.” “Full of jokes,” Boylan repeated. “Why shouldn’t he be full of jokes? What sort of place do they have?” “Two furnished rooms in a walkup.” “Your sister has a romantic disregard of the advantages of money,” Boylan said. “She will regret it later. Among the other things she will regret.” “She seemed happy.” Rudolph found Boylan’s prophecies distasteful.”

 


Irwin Shaw (27 februari 1913 – 16 mei 1984)
Cover voor een omnibus

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27e februari ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 27 februari 2016 deel 2.

Cynan Jones, John Steinbeck, Ruy Belo, Lawrence Durrell, André Roy, Henry Longfellow, Elisabeth Borchers, James T. Farrell, Irwin Shaw

De Welshe schrijver Cynan Jones werd geboren op 27 februari 1975 in Aberystwyth, Wales. Zie ook alle tags voor Cynan Jones op dit blog.

Uit: Cove

“He swings the fish from the water, a wild stripe flicking and flashing into the boat, and grabs the line, twisting the hook out, holding the fish down in the footrests. It gasps, thrashes. Drums. Something rapid and primal, ceremonial, in the shallow of the open boat.
Flecks of blood and scales loosen, as if turning to rainbows in his hands as he picks up the fish and breaks its neck, feels the minute rim of teeth inside its jaw on the pad of his forefinger, puts his thumb behind the head and snaps.
The jaw splits and the gills splay, like an opening flower. He was sure he would catch fish. He left just a simple note, ‘Pick salad x’.
He looks briefly towards the inland cliffs, hoping the peregrine might be there, scanning as he patiently undoes the knot of traces, pares the feathers away from each other until they are free and feeds them out. The boat is flecked. Glittered. A heat come to the morning now, convincing and thick.
The kayak lilts. Weed floats. He thinks of her hair in water. The same darkened blonde colour.
It’s unusual to catch only one. Or it was just a straggler. The edge of the shoal.
He retrieves a carrier bag from the drybag in back and puts the fish safe, the metal of it dulling immediately to cloth in his hands. Then he bails out the blood-rusted water that has come into the boat.
Fish don’t have eyelids, remember. In this bright water, it’s likely they are deeper out. He’s been hearing his father’s voice for the last few weeks now. I’ve got this one, though. That’s enough. That’s lunch anyway. The bay lay just a little way north. It was a short paddle from the flat beach inland of him, with the caravans on the low fields above, but it felt private. His father long ago had told him they were the only ones that knew about the bay and that was a good thing between them to believe.
You’ll set the pan on a small fire and cook the mackerel as you used to do together, in the pats of butter you took from the roadside cafe. The butter will be liquid by now, and you will have to squeeze it from the wrapper like an ointment.
He smiled at catching the fish. That part of the day safe.
I should bring her here. All these years and I haven’t. It’s different now. I should bring her.
The bones in the cooling pan, fingers sticky with the toffee of burnt butter.“

 

 
Cynan Jones (Aberystwyth, 27 februari 1975)

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Cynan Jones, John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell, André Roy, Henry Longfellow, Elisabeth Borchers, James T. Farrell, Irwin Shaw

De Welshe schrijver Cynan Jones werd geboren op 27 februari 1975 in Aberystwyth, Wales. Zie ook alle tags voor Cynan Jones op dit blog.

Uit: The Dig

“The policeman opened the door, looked at the deep mud of the yard, and got deliberately out.
Set back from the window, the man watched him through the gap in the curtains. He watched him scan the place. The policeman was young and he was not a policeman the big man had seen before.
The policeman bent through the car door and pushed the horn twice.
What do I do here? thought the man. He wished he’d left one of the big dogs off but knew even through the coal it would scent the badger and bother it. If I stay in the house, he’ll start looking round, thought the man. Ag.
The policeman had started to walk toward the house from the car and the big man came out.
Afternoon, sir. It’s clearing up, the policeman said. The policeman looked at the man and looked out as if at the weather over the valley.
The big man just nodded.
Few questions, really, sir. The policeman was light and inoffensive the way they are and the man moved to bring him away from the house.
Can you tell me what you were doing last night, or early this morning?
The big man didn’t reply.
The policeman looked around at the yard and privately noticed the two sets of tire tracks that were cut into the mud and that were not filled with overnight rain. He saw the old red van and guessed one set belonged to that. The policeman took in the many dumped engines and tires and the wastage of vehicles and machines about.
We’ve had a report of fly-tipping. He waited. I just wanted to ask whether you would know anything about that.
What did they tip? asked the man.
The policeman didn’t respond. He was looking at the junk and the big man saw and said, Does it look like I throw things away?”

 

 
Cynan Jones (Aberystwyth, 27 februari 1975)

 

Lees verder “Cynan Jones, John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell, André Roy, Henry Longfellow, Elisabeth Borchers, James T. Farrell, Irwin Shaw” →

Irwin Shaw, Vera Friedlander, N. Scott Momaday, Peter De Vries, Johannes Meinhold, Traugott Vogel

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irwin Shaw werd geboren op 27 februari 1913 als Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in New York. Zie alle tags voor Irwin Shaw op dit blog.

Uit: The Young Lions

“When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army’s disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn’t mean I believe in the Army. I don’t believe in any army. You don’t expect justice out of an army, if you’re a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I’m thankful for it.”
(…)

“This time it is not a simple, understandable war, within the same culture. This time it is an assault of the animal world upon the house of the human being. I don’t know what you saw in Africa and Italy, but I know what I saw in Russia and Poland. We made a cemetery a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide. Men, women, children, Poles, Russians, Jews, it made no difference. It could not be compared to any human action. It could be compared to a weasel in a henhouse. It was as though we felt that if we left anything alive in the East, it would one day bear witness against us and condemn us. And, now, we have made the final mistake. We are losing the war.”

 

 
Irwin Shaw (27 februari 1913 – 16 mei 1984)
Scene uit de gelijknamige film uit 1958 met Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando en Dean Martin

Lees verder “Irwin Shaw, Vera Friedlander, N. Scott Momaday, Peter De Vries, Johannes Meinhold, Traugott Vogel” →

James T. Farrell, Elisabeth Borchers, Vera Friedlander, Irwin Shaw

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Thomas Farrell werd geboren op 27 februari 1904 in Chicago. Zie ook alle tags voor James T. Farrell op dit blog.

Uit: Young Lonigan

„Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted in his mug. His hands were jammed in his trouser pockets, and he sneered. He puffed, drew the fag out of his mouth, inhaled and said to himself:
Well, I’m kissin’ the old dump goodbye tonight.
Studs was a small, broad-shouldered lad. His face was wide and planed; his hair was a light brown. His long nose was too large for his other features; almost a sheeny’s nose. His lips were thick and wide, and they did not seem at home on his otherwise frank and boyish face. He was always twisting them into his familiar tough-guy sneers. He had blue eyes; his mother rightly called them baby-blue eyes.
He took another drag and repeated to himself:
Well, I’m kissin’ the old dump goodbye.
The old dump was St. Patrick’s grammar school; and St. Patrick’s meant a number of things to Studs. It meant school, and school was a jailhouse that might just as well have had barred windows. It meant the long, wide, chalk-smelling room of the seventh- and eighth-grade boys, with its forty or fifty squirming kids. It meant the second floor of the tan brick, undistinguished parish building on Sixty-first Street that had swallowed so much of Studs’ life for the past eight years. It meant the black-garbed Sisters of Providence, with their rattling beads, their swishing strides, and the funny-looking wooden clappers they used, which made a dry snapping sound and which hurt like anything when a guy got hit over the head with one. It meant Sister Carmel, who used to teach fourth grade, but was dead now; and who used to hit everybody the edge of a ruler because she knew they all called her the bearded lady. It meant Studs, twisting in his seat, watching the sun come in the windows to show up the dust on the floor, twisting and squirming, and letting his mind fly to all kinds of places that were not like school. It meant Battleaxe Bertha talking and hearing lessons, her thin, sunken-jawed face white as a ghost, and sometimes looking like a corpse. It meant Bertha yelling in that creaky old woman’s voice of hers.“

 

James T. Farrell (27 februari 1904 – 22 augustus 1979)

Lees verder “James T. Farrell, Elisabeth Borchers, Vera Friedlander, Irwin Shaw” →

Vera Friedlander, Irwin Shaw, James T. Farrell, N. Scott Momaday

De Duitse schrijfster Vera Friedlander (eig. Veronika Schmidt) werd geboren op 27 februari 1928 in Woltersdorf. Friedlander werd tijdens de nazi-periode vervolgd als een zogenaamde half-joodse en werd het slachtoffer van dwangarbeid. Veel leden van haar familie werden gedeporteerd en vermoord in Auschwitz, Theresienstadt en andere plaatsen. Na haar afstuderen aan de Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Fakultät studeerde Friedlander germanistiek en behaalde haar doctoraat en habilitatie aan de Humboldt Universiteit in Berlijn. Zij kreeg drie kinderen en werkte als lector bij een uitgeverij. In 1976 gingen zij en haar man naar Warschau, waar ze doceerde aan de universiteit. In 1981 ontving ze de Jacob en Wilhelm Grimm Prijs. Van 1981 tot 1986 was zij hoogleraar Duits aan de Humboldt-universiteit.

 

Uit: Meine Freundin Luise 

 

„Meine Freundin Luise ist ein Pechvogel, ein dummer Pechvogel, aber eine liebenswerte Person.

Ihr letzter Partner fand eine andere Frau liebenswerter und verließ Luise. Sie wollte nicht allein bleiben. »Dafür bin ich nicht alt genug«, sagte sie.

Ich nahm mir vor, auf Luise in dieser Situation ein bisschen aufzupassen. Sie hatte sich schon öfter geirrt, wenn es um Männer ging. Das kostete sie einmal ihren fast neuen Clio, sonst wäre ihr Partner nicht ausgezogen, einmal war nach einer Trennung ihr Konto abgeräumt und einer hatte beim Abschied den Hund mitgenommen, an dem sie sehr hing. Dieses Mal sollte sie vom Pech verschont bleiben, das schwor ich ihr.

Ich brachte ihr drei Zeitungen, in denen allein lebende Männer aller Altersgruppen mit guten Berufen und unterschiedlichen Interessen vorgestellt wurden, Tennisspieler, Nichtraucher, Hundebesitzer, Briefmarkensammler, Weinkenner, Heimwerker – und von allen wurde geschrieben, dass sie lebensfrohe Optimisten seien.

Die Anzeigen stammten in der einen Zeitung von einer Frau Barbara aus Pankow, in einer anderen Zeitung von einer Frau Ursula aus dem Prenzlauer Berg und in der dritten Zeitung von einer Frau Monika aus Hellersdorf und alle klangen sehr seriös. Luise suchte sich aus jeder der drei Anzeigen einen Mann heraus, den sie kennen lernen wollte, und rief die Partnerschaftsagentinnen an.

Ich warnte sie. »Das gibt Stress. Was machst du, wenn dir alle drei Männer gefallen?«

»Damit werde ich fertig«, versicherte sie.

Die Damen Barbara, Ursula und Monika, luden sie zu einem Besuch ein, um sie mit dem Herrn, für den sie sich interessiere, bekannt zu machen. Und sie möge 100 Euro Vermittlungsgebühr mitbringen.

Um nicht dreimal 100 Euro zu zahlen, nahm sie zunächst nur den Termin bei der Dame Barbara in Pankow wahr.“

 

 

Vera Friedlander (Woltersdorf, 27 februari 1928)

Lees verder “Vera Friedlander, Irwin Shaw, James T. Farrell, N. Scott Momaday” →

John Steinbeck, André Roy, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Longfellow, Elisabeth Borchers, Irwin Shaw

De Amerikaanse schrijver John Steinbeck werd geboren in Salinas, Californië, op 27 februari 1902. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2009.

 

Uit: Of Mice and Men

 

“A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees—willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ’coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungleup near water. In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it.

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones. And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down river. For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool.”

 

John_Steinbeck-Monterey

John Steinbeck (27 februari 1902 – 20 december 1968)
Standbeeld in Monterey

 

De Canadese dichter, schrijver en essayist André Roy werd geboren op 27 februari 1944 in Montréal. Hij studeerde Frans en is werkzaam als docent en literair criticus. Het bekendst is zijn cyclus „Passions“, bestaande uit Les passions du Samedi (1979), Petit supplément aux passions (1980); en Monsieur Désir (1981).

 

Un rien d’amour

 

Le ciel distribué dans le temps massif ;

L’oeil est un temple dans la nuit ;

L’air marche

Parce que chacun possède son propre corps.

Pourquoi je rêve comme une bête

Quand tu n’es pas là ?

 

Je rêvais que tu rêvais dans mes songes,

Que tu étais heureux comme en enfer.

Il existe quatre lois pour la passion :

Avant, pendant, après, jamais.

 

Les étoiles digérées par ton corps

Deviennent des animaux dans tes yeux.

Ta passion veux que tu saignes,

Que tu puisses te pardonner de nous aimer.

 

The Muscles and Body Hairs

 

Melted in the mouth, colour hanging

A pink tool, but for now let”s talk

Of the ripple of his muscles (see how time

Is upset at a glance, the clock in

Slow motion) attuned to his technique, I exclaim

His body hairs briefly summing them up

In those cerain young spots that make me

Abandon all discretion now I’m summing up

Since at that time I was still coming.

 

 

Pleasure and Desire, Knowing and Wanting

 

knowing fatal pleasure, or very chemical,

so stupendously they I don’t dare write the word

they ejaculated but don’t fix me foor good

in those virile snapshots

despite their nervousness and the conversation that

helped I understand this will to tenderness,

the irritated look on their gorgeous faces

(“Your face is as cute as a love-word”)

because that swiftness, that suavity and

because desire has already scored you, teeth sweat,

the happenings that resist or that have disa
ppeared

too soon, but no zeal, no shame in admitting it.

 

 

Vertaald door Daniel Sloate

 

Roy

André Roy (Montréal, 27 februari 1944)

 

De Britse dichter en schrijver Lawrence George Durrell werd geboren op 27 februari 1912 in Jalandhar in India. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2009.

 

Delos 

For Diana Gould

 

On charts they fall like lace,

Islands consuming in a sea

Born dense with its own blue:

And like repairing mirrors holding up

Small towns and trees and rivers

To the still air, the lovely air:

From the clear side of springing Time,

In clement places where the windmills ride,

Turning over grey springs in Mykonos,

In shadows with a gesture of content.

 

The statues of the dead here

Embark on sunlight, sealed

Each in her model with the sightless eyes:

The modest stones of Greeks,

Who gravely interrupted death by pleasure.

And in harbours softly fallen

The liver-coloured sails –

Sharp-featured brigantines with eyes –

Ride in reception so like women:

The pathetic faculty of girls

To register and utter desire

In the arms of men upon the new-mown waters,

Follow the wind, with their long shining keels

Aimed across Delos at a star.

 

 

 

This Unimportant Morning 

 

This unimportant morning

Something goes singing where

The capes turn over on their sides

And the warm Adriatic rides

Her blue and sun washing

At the edge of the world and its brilliant cliffs.

 

Day rings in the higher airs

Pure with cicadas, and sl
owing

Like a pulse to smoke from farms,

 

Extinguished in the exhausted earth,

Unclenching like a fist and going.

 

Trees fume, cool, pour – and overflowing

Unstretch the feathers of birds and shake

Carpets from windows, brush with dew

The up-and-doing: and young lovers now

Their little resurrections make.

 

And now lightly to kiss all whom sleep

Stitched up – and wake, my darling, wake.

The impatient Boatman has been waiting

Under the house, his long oars folded up

Like wings in waiting on the darkling lake.

 

lawrence-durrell

Lawrence Durrell (27 februari 1912 – 7 november 1990)

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Henry Wadsworth Longfellow werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 27 februari 1807. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2009.

 

Hymn to the Night 

 

I heard the trailing garments of the Night

Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light

From the celestial walls!

 

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,

Stoop o’er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,

As of the one I love.

 

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,

The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night

Like some old poet’s rhymes.

 

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air

My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,–

From those deep cisterns flows.

 

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear

What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,

And they complain no more.

 

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!

Descend with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,

The best-beloved Night! 

 

henry-longfellow

Henry Longfellow (27 februari 1807 – 24 maart 1882)

 

De Duitse schrijfster en dichteres Elisabeth Borchers werd geboren in Homberg op 27 februari 1926. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2009.

November

Es kommt eine Zeit,
da lassen die Bäume
ihre Blätter fallen.
Die Häuser rücken
enger zusammen.
Aus dem Schornstein
kommt ein Rauch.

Es kommt eine Zeit,
da werden die Tage klein
und die Nächte groß,
und jeder Abend
hat einen schönen Namen.

Einer heißt Hänsel und Gretel.
Einer heißt Schneewittchen.
Einer heißt Rumpelstilzchen.
Einer heißt Katherlieschen.
Einer heißt Hans im Glück.
Einer heißt Sterntaler.

 

Dezember

Es kommt eine Zeit
da wird es still
Da gehn die Lichter aus
da kommt ein Wind
ruft nach dem Fährmann
Der träumt den Traum
vom goldnen Schiff
Das Schiff hat eine
große Fahrt bei Nacht
Es geht von Haus zu Haus
Es fährt die Straßen auf und ab
Es kommt durch alle Länder
Es kommt durch alle Stuben
Da bleibt ein goldner Schein zurück

Borchers

Elisabeth Borchers (Homberg, 27 februari 1926)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irwin Shaw werd geboren op 27 februari 1913 als Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2009.

 

Uit: The Girls In Their Summer Dresses

 

„‘Sure,’ he said. He took his eyes off the hatless girl with the dark hair, cut dancer-style, like a helmet, who was walking past him with the self-conscious strength and grace dancers have. She was walking without a coat and she looked very solid and strong and her belly was flat, like a boy’s, under her skirt, and her hips swung boldly because she was a dancer and also because she knew Michael was looking at her. She smiled a little to herself as she went past and Michael noticed all these things before he looked back at his wife. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘we’re going to watch the Giants and we’re going to eat steak and we’re going to see a French picture. How do you like that?’
‘That’s it,’ Frances said flatly. ‘That’s the program for the day. Or maybe you’d just rather walk up and down Fifth Avenue.’
‘You always look at other women,’ Frances said. ‘At every damn woman in the city of New York.’
‘Oh, come now,’ Michael said, pretending to joke. ‘Only pretty ones. And, after all, how many pretty women are there in New York? Seventeen?’
‘More. At least you seem to think so. Wherever you go.’
‘Not the truth. Occasionally, maybe, I look at a woman as she passes. In the street. I admit, perhaps in the street I look at a woman once in a while….’
‘Everywhere,’ Frances said. ‘Every damned place we go. Restaurants, subways, theaters, lectures, concerts.’
‘Now, darling,’ Michael said. ‘I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.’
‘You ought to see the look in your eye,’ Frances said, ‘as you casually inspect the universe on Fifth Avenue.’
‘I’m a happily married man.’ Michael pressed her elbow tenderly, knowing what he was doing. ‘Example for the whole twentieth century, Mr. and Mrs. Mike Loomis.’
‘You mean it?’
‘Frances, baby….’
‘Are you really happily married?’
‘Sure,’ Michael said, feeling the whole Sunday morning sinking like lead inside him.   ‘Now what the hell is the sense in talking like that?’
  ‘I would like to know.’ Frances walked faster now, looking straight ahead, her face showing nothing, which was the way she always managed it when she was arguing or feeling bad.“

 

IrwinShaw

Irwin Shaw (27 februari 1913 – 16 mei 1984)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 27e februari ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

 

John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Longfellow, Elisabeth Borchers, Jules Lemaître, James T. Farrell, N. Scott Momaday, Irwin Shaw, Johannes Meinhold, Traugott Vogel

De Amerikaanse schrijver John Steinbeck werd geboren in Salinas, Californië, op 27 februari 1902. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008.

Uit: The Log from the Sea of Cortez

“In the early morning before daylight we came into the harbor at San Diego, in through the narrow passage, and we followed the lights on a changing course to the pier. All about us war bustled, although we had no war; steel and thunder, powder and men–the men preparing thoughtlessly, like dead men, to destroy things. The planes roared over in formation and the submarines were quiet and ominous. There is no playfulness in a submarine. The military mind must limit its thinking to be able to perform its function at all. Thus, in talking with a naval officer who had won a target competition with big naval guns, we asked, ‘have you thought what happens in a little street when one of your shells explodes, of the families torn to pieces, a thousand generations influenced when you signaled Fire?’ ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Those shells travel so far that you couldn’t possibly see where they land.’ And he was quite correct. if he could really see where they land and what they do, if he could really feel the power in his dropped hand and the waves radiating out from his gun, he would not be able to perform his function. He himself would be the weak point of his gun. But by not seeing, by insisting that it be a problem of ballistics and trajectory, he is a good gunnery officer. And he is too humble to take the responsibility for thinking. The whole structure of his world would be endangered if he permitted himself to think. The pieces must stick within their pattern or the whole thing collapses and the design is gone. We wonder whether in the present pattern the pieces are not straining to fall out of line; whether the paradoxes of our times are not finally mounting to a conclusion of ridiculousness that will make the whole structure collapse. For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of a people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership.”

 

Steinbeck

John Steinbeck (27 februari 1902 – 20 december 1968)

 

De Britse dichter en schrijver Lawrence George Durrell werd geboren op 27 februari 1912 in Jalandhar in India. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008.

Uit: Justine

“As for me I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory. I spoke of the uselessness of art but added nothing truthful about its consolations. The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this—that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold—the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential—the imagination. Otherwise why should we hurt one another? No, the remission I am seeking, and will be granted perhaps, is not one I shall ever see in the bright friendly eyes of Melissa or the sombre brow-dark gaze of Justine. We have all of us taken different paths now; but in this, the first great fragmentation of my maturity I feel the confines of my art and my living deepened immeasurably by the memory of them. In thought I achieve them anew; as if only here—this wooden table over the sea under an olive tree, only here can I enrich them as they deserve. So that the taste of this writing should have taken something from its living subjects—their breath, skin, voices—weaving them into the supple tissues of human memory. I want them to live again to the point where pain becomes art….Perhaps this is a useless attempt, I cannot say. But I must try.”

 

lawrence-durrell

Lawrence Durrell (27 februari 1912 – 7 november 1990)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Henry Wadsworth Longfellow werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 27 februari 1807. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008.

 

Afternoon in February

  

The day is ending,

The night is descending;

The marsh is frozen,

The river dead.

 

Through clouds like ashes

The red sun flashes

On village windows

That glimmer red.

 

The snow recommences;

The buried fences

Mark no longer

The road o’er the plain;

 

While through the meadows,

Like fearful shadows,

Slowly passes

A funeral train.

 

The bell is pealing,

And every feeling

Within me responds

To the dismal knell;

 

Shadows are trailing,

My heart is bewailing

And tolling within

Like a funeral bell.

 

longfellow

Henry Longfellow (27 februari 1807 – 24 maart 1882)

 

De Duitse schrijfster en dichteres Elisabeth Borchers werd geboren in Homberg op 27 februari 1926. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008.

 

März

 

Es kommt eine Zeit,

da nimmt’s ein böses Ende

mit dem Schneemann.

 

Er verliert seinen schwarzen Hut,

er verliert seine rote Nase,

und der Besen fällt ihm aus der Hand.

Kleiner wird er von Tag

zu Tag.

 

Neben ihm wächst ein Grün

und noch ein Grün

und noch ein Grün.

 

Die Sonne treibt

Vögel vor sich her.

Die wünschen dem Schneemann

eine gute Reise.

 

 

Mai

 

Es kommt eine Zeit

da machen die Vögel Hochzeit

 

Nachtigall und Lerche

Zaunkönig und Sperling

Rotkehlchen und Amsel

 

Ein Lied fliegt zum andern

Die Bäume tragen weite Kleider

Der Wind läutet die Blumen

Die Bienen haben goldne Schuhe

 

Die Katze

die graue die schwarze die weiße

sie darf es nicht tun

Sie darf die Hochzeit

nicht stören

 

Borchers

Elisabeth Borchers (Homberg, 27 februari 1926)

 

De Franse schrijver en dichter Jules Lemaître werd geboren op 27 februari 1853 in Vennecy, Loiret. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2008.

Uit: Edmond et Jules de Goncourt

„Un tel genre de talent ne peut s’appliquer tout entier, on le comprend, qu’à la peinture des choses vues, de la vie moderne, surtout parisienne. Cinq des romans de MM. de Goncourt, sur six, sont des romans parisiens. Leur objet, c’est «la modernité», laquelle est visible surtout à Paris. Ce néologisme s’entend aisément ; mais ce qu’il représente n’est pas très facile à déterminer, car le moderne change insensiblement, et puis ce qui est moderne est toujours superposé ou mêlé à ce qui ne l’est point ou à ce qui ne l’est déjà plus. La modernité, c’est L d’abord, si l’on veut, dans l’ensemble et dans le détail de la vie extérieure, le genre de pittoresque qui est particulier à notre temps. C’est ce qui porte la date d’aujourd’hui dans nos maisons, dans nos rues, dans nos lieux de réunion. L’habit noir ou la jaquette des hommes, les chiffons des femmes, l’asphalte du boulevard, le petit journalisme, le bec de gaz et demain la lumière électrique, et une infinité d’autres choses en font partie. C’est ce qui fait qu’une rue, un café, un salon, une femme d’à présent ne ressemblent pas, extérieurement, à une femme, à un salon, à un café, à une rue du XVIIIe, ou même du temps de Louis-Philippe. La modernité, c’est encore ce qui, dans les cervelles, a l’empreinte du moment où nous sommes ; c’est une certaine fleur de culture extrême ou de perversion intellectuelle ; un tour d’esprit et de langage fait surtout d’outrance, de recherche et d’irrévérence, où domine le paradoxe, l’ironie et «la blague», où se trahit le fiévreux de l’existence, une expérience amère, une prétention à être revenu de tout, en même temps qu’une sensibilité excessive ; et c’est aussi, chez quelques personnes privilégiées, une bonté, une tendresse de cœur que les désillusions du blasé font plus désintéressé, et que l’intelligence du critique et de l’artiste fait plus intelligente et plus délicate… La modernité, c’est une chose à la fois très vague et très simple ; et l’on dira peut-être que la découverte de MM. de Goncourt n’est point si extraordinaire, qu’on avait inventé «le moderne» bien avant eux, qu’il n’y faut que des yeux.“

 

lemaitre

Jules Lemaître (27 februari 1853 – 5 augustus 1914)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Thomas Farrell werd geboren op 27 februari 1904 in Chicago. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007.

Uit: Joyce and His First Self-Portrait

“This race and this country and this life produced me,” declares Stephen Dedalus–artistic image of James Joyce himself–in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” “A Portrait” is the story of how Stephen was produced, how he rejected that which produced him, how he discovered that his destiny was to become a lonely one of artistic creation. It is well to look into the life out of which Stephen came, to discuss the social and national background of this novel. In Ireland a major premise of any discussion of her culture and of her literature is an understanding of Irish nationalism. And it is at least arguable that Joyce was a kind of inverted nationalist–that the nationalism which he rejects runs through him like a central thread.

Ireland, when James Joyce was a boy, suffered from a profound political defeat, the fall of Parnell. In that, once again, she was set back in her long struggle to attain nationhood. The aftermath was marked by a deeply felt and pervasive bitterness, often expressed in feelings of personal betrayal. And “A Portrait” reflects such moods. The brilliantly written scene, early in this novel, of the Dedalus family pitilessly quarreling at the Christmas dinner table is a highly concentrated artistic representation of the magnitude of Parnell’s fall in Ireland, of how it cut through families with a knifelike sharpness. The family argument is personal and its passionate anger seems to be in inverse proportion to the political impotence of those who are hurling insults at one another.

 

Farrell

James T. Farrell (27 februari 1904 – 22 augustus 1979)

 

De Amerikaanse (native, Kiowa) schrijver N(avarre) Scott Momaday werd geboren op 27 februari 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007.

 

The Earth

  

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon

the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up

to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from

as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon

it.

He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at

every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon

it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest

motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and

all the colors of the dawn and dusk.

For we are held by more than the force of gravity to the earth.

It is the entity from which we are sprung, and that into which

we are dissolved in time. The blood of the whole human race

is invested in it. We are moored there, rooted as surely, as

deeply as are the ancient redwoods and bristlecones.

 

Momaday_N_Scott

N. Scott Momaday (Lawton, 27 februari 1934)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Irwin Shaw werd geboren op 27 februari 1913 als Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in New York. Hij stamde uit een Russisch-joodse familie uit de Bronx, die na zijn geboorte naar Brooklyn verhuisde en de familienaam in Shaw veranderde. Tijdens zijn colletijd schreef hij al voor de schoolkrant. In 1935 begon hij romans voor de radio te schrijven (Dick Tracy). Zijn eerste theaterstuk werd in 1936 opgevoerd. In de jaren veertig schreef hij draaiboeken voor Hollywood. Gedurende WO II was hij als soldaat in Europa. Zijn ervaringen verwerkte hij in zijn eerste roman The Young Lions verscheen in 1949. Zijn tweede The Troubled Air, die de opkomst van het McCarthyisme beschreef, in 1951. Shaw werd ook zeer gewaardeerd als schrijver van short stories. Die verschenen in bladen als Collier’s, Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, en The Saturday Evening Post. Een verzameling van 63 van zijn beste verhalen werd uitgevracht als Short Stories: Five Decades in 1978, herdrukt in 2000 als een 784-pagina dikke University of Chicago Press paperback.

Uit: The Climate Of Insomnia

 „He awoke early, conscious that it was a sunny day outside. He lay in bed feeling warm and healthy. There was a noise from the next bed, and he looked across the little space. There was a woman in the next bed. She was middle-aged and wearing curlers and she was snoring and Hugh was certain he had never seen her before in his life. He got out of bed silently, dressed quickly, and went out into the sunny day.

Without thinking about it, he walked to the subway station. He watched the people hurrying toward the trains and he knew that he probably should join them. He had the feeling that somewhere in the city to the south, in some tall building on a narrow street, his arrival was expected. But he knew that no matter how hard he tried he would never be able to find the building. Buildings these days, it occurred to him suddenly, were too much like other buildings.

He walked briskly away from the subway station in the direction of the river. The river was shining in the sun and there was ice along the banks. A boy of about twelve, in a plaid mackinaw and a wool hat, was sitting on a bench and regarding the river. there were some schoolbooks, tied with a leather strap, on the frozen ground at his feet.

Hugh sat down next to the boy. ‘Good morning,’ he said pleasantly.

‘Good morning,’ said the boy.

‘What’re you doing?’ Hugh asked.

‘I’m counting the boats,’ the boy said. ‘Yesterday I counted thirty-two boats. Not counting ferries. I don’t count ferries.’

Hugh nodded. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down over the river. By five o’clock that afternoon he and the boy had c
ounted forty-three boats, not including ferries. He couldn’t remember having had a nicer day.“

 

Shaw2

Irwin Shaw (27 februari 1913 – 16 mei 1984)

 

De Duitse schrijver Johannes Wilhelm Meinhold werd geboren op 27 februari 1797 in Netzelkow op Usedom. Hij studeerde theologie, filosofie en filologie in Greifswald, maar moest die studie na twee jaar afbreken wegens gebrek aan geld. Hij werd huisleraar en ontwikkelde zich verder door zelfstudie. In 1817 slaagde hij alsnog voor zijn examen. In 1827 werd hij dominee in Krummin. In 1838 begon hij zijn novelle “Die Pfarrerstochter von Coserow“ om te werken tot de roman „Maria Schweidler, die Bernsteinhexe“, die hij in delen in 1841 en 1842 publiceerde. Het boek uit 1843 werd zijn succesvolste werk.

Uit: Die Bernsteinhexe

 “Nach etzlichen Tagen, als unsere Nothdurft fast verzehret, fiel mir auch meine letzte Kuh umb (die andern hatten die Wülfe, wie oben bemeldet, allbereits zurissen) nicht ohne sonderlichen Verdacht, daß die Lise ihr etwas angethan, angesehen sie den Tag vorhero noch wacker gefressen. Doch lasse ich das in seinen Würden, dieweil ich Niemand nit verleumbden mag; kann auch geschehen sein durch die Schikkung des gerechten Gottes, deßen Zorn ich wohl verdienet hab’ – Summa:

ich war wiederumb in großen Nöthen und mein Töchterlein Maria zuriß mir noch mehr das Herze durch ihr Seufzen, als das Geschreie anhub: daß abermals ein Trupp Kaiserlicher nach Uekeritze gekommen, und noch gräulicher denn die ersten gemarodiret, auch das halbe Dorf in Brand gestecket. Derohalben hielt ich mich nicht mehr sicher in meiner Hütten, sondern nachdem in einem brünstigen Gebet Alles dem Herrn empfohlen, machte mich mit meinem Töchterlein und der alten Ilsen auf, in den Streckelberg1 wo ich allbereits ein Loch, einer Höhlen gleich, und trefflich von Brommelbeeren verrancket uns ausersehen, wenn die Noth uns verscheuchen söllte. Nahmen daher mit, was uns an Nothdurft des Leibes geblieben, und rannten mit Seufzen und Weinen in den Wald, wohin uns aber bald die alten Greisen und das Weibsvolk mit den Kindern folgten, welche ein groß Hungergeschrei erhoben.”

meinhold

Johannes Meinhold (27 februari 1797 – 30 november 1851)

 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 27 februari 2007.

De Zwitserse schrijver Traugott Vogel werd op 27 februari 1894 als zoon van een groentehandelaar in Zürich geboren.