Jean-Edern Hallier, Marcel Cabon, William Dean Howells, Steven Barnes, Mercedes de Acosta

De Franse schrijver Jean-Edern Hallier werd geboren op 1 maart 1936 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Zie ook alle tags voor Jean-Edern Hallier op dit blog.

Uit: Bréviaire pour une jeunesse déracinée

« Aujourd’hui, en mon train endiablé, quand je me retourne, je vois d’autres enfants qui me poursuivent, et se rapprochent. L’un me ressemble singulièrement, avec ses yeux verts, sa mèche noire. Il me fait plus peur que les autres, avec son air de farouche détermination. Lui, est sans pitié. A sa moue dédaigneuse, à son regard perdu et fixe de voyant, je reconnais qui je fus – et qui je redeviens, quand je m’évade de la société des hommes pour travailler à l’un de mes livres. O solitudes enchantées ! Ma force d’oubli se déverse souvent en un havre de grâce, un vert paradis où le temps se gonfle, reprenant sa capillarité perdue, sa subjectivité, et ce rêve habité de réel. Elle est partie. Quoi ? L’Eternité. La voici retrouvée. »

 

 
Jean-Edern Hallier (1 maart 1936 – 12 januari 1997)

Lees verder “Jean-Edern Hallier, Marcel Cabon, William Dean Howells, Steven Barnes, Mercedes de Acosta”

Jean-Edern Hallier, Steven Barnes, Mercedes de Acosta, Marcel Cabon, William Dean Howells

De Franse schrijver Jean-Edern Hallier werd geboren op 1 maart 1936 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Zie ook alle tags voor Jean-Edern Hallier op dit blog.

Uit: Carnets Impudiques

«… Sans les femmes, je ne serais rien. Je suis rassuré de l’entendre. – Jean-Edern, viens, viens… Je suis venu, et en me redressant, je suis allé me regarder dans la glace du cabinet de toilette, les cheveux hirsutes, le poil dru sur le menton, entre des plaques espacées de peau douce, qui sont toujours restées imberbes depuis mes blessures d’enfance, lors du siège de Budapest, en 1945. J’ai les paupières lourdes, les cernes sous les yeux, rimmelisé d’épuisement, acteur et unique spectateur de mon théâtre intime, je deviens à la fois Auguste le clown, et Auguste l’empereur, dont Suétone racontait qu’au dernier jour de sa vie, réclamant un miroir, il demandait à ses proches « s’il avait bien joué jusqu’au bout la farce de sa vie ».
(…)

“Je lui passe le volant à 150, 180, 190, elle appuie sur l’accélérateur.
– Et si nous avions un accident d’amour ? me dit-elle.
– Quand tu veux, mais après une dernière nuit… Pensais-je, sans lui dire, en la contemplant de profil. Elle était presque redevenue belle : pas encore assez nue sous sa robe, peut-etre. Ca ne m’empechait pas de la regarder exprès dans les virages, à son grand désespoir, pour voir si elle était mieux que la mort.”

 
Jean-Edern Hallier (1 maart 1936 – 12 januari 1997)

Lees verder “Jean-Edern Hallier, Steven Barnes, Mercedes de Acosta, Marcel Cabon, William Dean Howells”

Richard Wilbur, Ralph Ellison, Steven Barnes, Jean-Edern Hallier

De Amerikaanse dichter Richard Wilbur werd geboren op 1 maart 1921 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor Richard Wilbur op dit blog.

 

Orchard Trees, January

It’s not the case, though some might wish it so

Who from a window watch the blizzard blow

White riot through their branches vague and stark,

That they keep snug beneath their pelted bark.

They take affliction in until it jells

To crystal ice between their frozen cells,

And each of them is inwardly a vault

Of jewels rigorous and free of fault,

Unglimpsed until in May it gently bears

A sudden crop of green-pronged solitaires.

 

Exeunt

Piecemeal the summer dies;

At the field’s edge a daisy lives alone;

A last shawl of burning lies

On a gray field-stone.

All cries are thin and terse;

The field has droned the summer’s final mass;

A cricket like a dwindled hearse

Crawls from the dry grass.



Richard Wilbur (New York, 1 maart 1921)

Eind jaren 1940

Lees verder “Richard Wilbur, Ralph Ellison, Steven Barnes, Jean-Edern Hallier”

Steven Barnes, Jean-Edern Hallier, William Dean Howells, John Byrom, Mercedes de Acosta, Marcel Cabon

De Amerikaanse schrijver Steven Barnes werd geboren op 1 maart 1952 in Los Angeles. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2010.

 

Uit: Zulu Heart

 

Mali had been first to touch Bilalistan’s shores, her ships piloted by captains and navigators refused by Abyssinia’s royal court. But that kingdom’s Immortal Empress had swiftly grasped the potential of the storied land far to the west, and had claimed ownership. Egypt likewise had sent ships and men, as had half a dozen other peoples. Bitterly they fought. As kingdoms rose and fell in the Old World, so did they in the New.

The derelict’s barnacled ribs shimmered in twenty cubits of crystalline water, not some heroic singularity but merely another of the rivened husks scattered about the sea bottom like broken birds’ nests, once the proud carriages of the bravest sailors the world had ever known. Whether their destroyers’ vessels had flown the flags of their origin or slunk through the islands like sharks in the starlight, death had been the same, the watery graves the same, the end the same: northern Bilalistan belonged to Egypt and Abyssinia alone.

Kai resented the fact that such thoughts had interrupted his swim. This was a time for pleasure, not politics. So despite these waters’ grim history, or the urgency of a mission he dared not share even with his beloved wife, he paddled about like a boy half his age, reveling in the sun and surf.

Kai of Dar Kush had known war, and loss, and twenty-three summers. He was a tall man, so perfectly proportioned that, in repose, he seemed smaller than his actual height. Beardless and smooth-skinned was Kai, of almost weightless carriage, as easily underestimated as a sleeping cobra.

A solid shadow glided beneath him, roiling the water with its passage. Kai blinked his eyes to clarity, bringing into focus the dolphin’s every gray-black digit. Its five cubits of muscle could have shattered him with a flick if it chose, but the creature seemed more inclined merely to float and study him.“

 

 

Steven Barnes (Los Angeles, 1 maart 1952)

 

 

Lees verder “Steven Barnes, Jean-Edern Hallier, William Dean Howells, John Byrom, Mercedes de Acosta, Marcel Cabon”

Jean-Edern Hallier, William Dean Howells, Marcel Cabon, John Byrom, Mercedes de Acosta

De Franse schrijver Jean-Edern Hallier werd geboren op 1 maart 1936 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009.

 

Uit: Un barbare en Asie du Sud-Est

 

« Et comment aurait-on pu, après la paix de Genève, en 1975, penser que l’Asie du Sud-Est intéresserait encore ? Las, les conséquences de la fin de la guerre du Vietnam et de la défaite des Américains auront été incalculables : tout un sous-continent, en proie à l’érosion interne et à un formidable glissement de terrain, est en train de s’effondrer comme une falaise d’où nous contemplerions paisiblement l’océan, assis tout en haut, tandis que les vagues invisibles la minent implacablement en dessous. Boat-people, pirates, réfugiés, famine au Cambodge, colonie de peuplement, nouveau capitalisme sauvage chinois, montée de l’Islam sont autant d’intersignes – termes désignant dans les légendes de la mort de Basse Bretagne les mauvais présages – de ce prochain changement de la carte du monde, sur de vastes territoires, qu’aucun traité de Yalta n’aura fixé… »

 

 Hallier

Jean-Edern Hallier (1 maart 1936 – 12 januari 1997)

 

 

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en criticus William Dean Howells werd geboren op 1 maart 1837 in Martinsville, Ohio. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009.

 

Tomorrow

 

Old fraud, I know you in that gay disguise,

That air of hope, that promise of surprise:

Beneath your bravery, as you come this way,

I see the sordid presence of Today;

And I shall see there, before you are gone,

All t
he dull Yesterdays that I have known.

 

 

 

Earliest Spring

 

Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,

Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,

Through all the moaning chimneys, and ’thwart all the hollows and

angles

Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.

 

But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow

Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift

Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,

Deep in the oak’s chill core, under the gathering drift.

 

Nay, to earth’s life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire

(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes–

Rapture of life ineffable, perfect–as if in the brier,

Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.

 

dean_howells

William Dean Howells (1 maart 1837 – 11 mei 1920)

 

De Mauritiaanse dichter, schrijver en journalist Marcel Cabon werd geboren op 29 februari 1912 in Curepipe. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009. 

 

Kélibé-Kéliba (Fragment)

 

Une coiffure de plumes.

Kélibé-Kéliba.

Une coiffure de plumes,

des reins plus souples que le feu.

 

Des bracelets de coquillages

Kélibé-Kéliba,

des bracelets de coquillages,

des reins plus souples que le feu.

 

Des nattes de passiava.

Kélibé-kéliba,

des nattes de passiava,

des reins plus souples que le feu.

 

Et dans mes bras ma Kélibé.

 

Et dans tes bras ta kéliba.

 

Et dans mes bras ma Kélibé.

 

Et le vieux roi d’Asakali

qui avait perdu sa couronne

disait à la veuve jolie

qu’il avait prise dans ses bras:

“Hâtons-nous d’aimer:l’heure est douce.

Hatons-nous d’aimer:l’heure est brêve…”

 

Marcel Cabon

Marcel Cabon (29 februari 1912 – 31 januari 1972)

 

 

De Engelse dichter en vertaler  John Byrom werd geboren op 29 februari 1692 in Manchester. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 februari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009.

 

Uit: Miscellaneous Poems

 

“God bless the King, I mean the Faith’s Defender;
God bless – no harm in blessing – the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all – that’s quite another thing.”

 

Byrom

John Byrom (29 februari 1692 – 26 september 1763)

 

De Spaans-Amerikaanse schrijfster en dichteres Mercedes de Acosta werd geboren op 1 maart 1893 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2009.

 Uit: Here Lies the Heart

 

„In Madras I hired a car, and so anxious was I to arrive in Tiruvannamalai that I did not go to bed and traveled by night, arriving about seven o’clock in the morning after driving almost eleven hours. I was very tired as I got out of the car in a small square in front of the temple [Arunachaleswara Temple]. The driver explained he could take me no farther. I turned toward the hill of Arunachala and hurried in the hot sun along the dust-covered road to the abode about two miles from town where the Sage dwelt. As I ran those two miles, deeply within myself I knew that I was running toward the greatest experience of my life.When, dazed and filled with emotion, I first entered the hall, I did not quite know what to do. Coming from strong sunlight into the somewhat darkened hall, it was, at first, difficult to see; nevertheless, I perceived Bhagavan at once, sitting in the Buddha posture on his couch in the corner. At the same moment I felt overcome by some strong power in the hall, as if an invisible wind was pushing violently against me. For a moment I felt dizzy. Then I recovered myself. To my great surprise I suddenly heard an American voice calling out to me, “Hello, come in.” It was the voice of an American named Guy Hague, who originally came from Long Beach, California. He told me later that he had been honorably discharged from the American Navy in the Philippines and had then worked his way to India, taking up the study of yoga when he reached Bombay. Then he heard about Sri Ramana Maharshi and, feeling greatly drawn to him, decided to go to Tiruvannamalai. When I met him he had already been with the Maharshi for a year, sitting uninterruptedly day and night in the hall with the sage.”

 

DeCosta

Mercedes de Acosta (1 maart 1893 – 9 mei 1968)

Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Ralph Ellison, Steven Barnes, Jean-Edern Hallier, William Dean Howells, Marcel Cabon, John Byrom, Mercedes de Acosta

De Amerikaanse dichter Robert Traill Spence Lowell werd geboren op 1 maart 1917 in Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2008.

 

 

The Old Flame

  

My old flame, my wife!

Remember our lists of birds?

One morning last summer, I drove

by our house in Maine. It was still

on top of its hill –

 

Now a red ear of Indian maize

was splashed on the door.

Old Glory with thirteen stripes

hung on a pole. The clapboard

was old-red schoolhouse red.

 

Inside, a new landlord,

a new wife, a new broom!

Atlantic seaboard antique shop

pewter and plunder

shone in each room.

 

A new frontier!

No running next door

now to phone the sheriff

for his taxi to Bath

and the State Liquor Store!

 

No one saw your ghostly

imaginary lover

stare through the window

and tighten

the scarf at his throat.

 

Health to the new people,

health to their flag, to their old

restored house on the hill!

Everything had been swept bare,

furnished, garnished and aired.

 

Everything’s changed for the best –

how quivering and fierce we were,

there snowbound together,

simmering like wasps

in our tent of books!

 

Poor ghost, old love, speak

with your old voice

of flaming insight

that kept us awake all night.

In one bed and apart,

 

we heard the plow

groaning up hill –

a red light, then a blue,

as it tossed off the snow

to the side of the road.

 

lowell_r_02

Robert Lowell (1 maart 1917 – 12 September 1977)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Richard Wilbur werd geboren op 1 maart 1921 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 februari 2008.

 

Matthew VIII,28 ff.

  

Rabbi, we Gadarenes

Are not ascetics; we are fond of wealth and possessions.

Love, as You call it, we obviate by means

Of the planned release of aggressions.

 

We have deep faith in properity.

Soon, it is hoped, we will reach our full potential.

In the light of our gross product, the practice of charity

Is palpably non-essential.

 

It is true that we go insane;

That for no good reason we are possessed by devils;

That we suffer, despite the amenities which obtain

At all but the lowest levels.

 

We shall not, however, resign

Our trust in the high-heaped table and the full trough.

If You cannot cure us without destroying our swine,

We had rather You shoved off.

 

wilbur

Richard Wilbur (New York, 1 maart 1921)

 

De Afro-Amerikaanse schrijver Ralph (Waldo) Ellison werd geboren in Oklahoma City op 1 maart 1913. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007.

 

Uit: Juneteenth

 

“Two days before the shooting a chartered planeload of Southern Negroes swooped down upon the District of Columbia and attempted to see the Senator. They were all quite elderly: old ladies dressed in little white caps and white uniforms made of surplus nylon parachute material, and men dressed in neat but old-fashioned black suits, wearing wide-brimmed, deep-crowned panama hats which, in the Senator’s walnut-paneled reception room now, they held with a grave ceremonial air. Solemn, uncommunicative and quietly insistent, they were led by a huge, distinguished-looking old fellow who on the day of the chaotic event was to prove himself, his age notwithstanding, an extraordinarily powerful man. Tall and broad and of an easy dignity, this was the Reverend A. Z. Hickman–better known, as one of the old ladies proudly informed the Senator’s secretary, as “God’s Trombone.”

This, however, was about all they were willing to explain. Forty-four in number, the women with their fans and satchels and picnic baskets, and the men carrying new blue airline take-on bags, they listened intently while Reverend Hickman did their talking.

“Ma’am,” Hickman said, his voice deep and resonant as he nodded toward the door of the Senator’s private office, “you just tell the Senator that Hickman has arrived. When he hears who’s out here he’ll know that it’s important and want to see us.”

 

Ellison

Ralph (Waldo) Ellison (1 maart 1913 –  16 april 1994)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Steven Barnes werd geboren op 1 maart 1952 in Los Angeles. Zie ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007.

 

Uit: Lion’s Blood

 

SPRING’S FIRST DAY WAS A WARM SWEET SONG, a time of companionable silences and comfortably shared labor in Mahon O’Dere’s coracle. The boat’s round woven sides bobbed gently in the Lady’s arms. Aidan O’Dere, eleven years old and the crannog’s best swimmer, leaned against the coracle’s side, reveling in the river’s timeless flow. He studied the dark darting shadows of the fish as if they held the secrets of the universe, his mind alternately racing and utterly still.

Just now, his thoughts were of his father, Mahon, a lean, strong man weathered brown by sun and wind. He pulled the nets all day without tiring, best fisherman and fighter in the village bearing Aidan’s great-grandfather’s name. Father and son were sculpted from the same clay: blazing golden hair, crystal blue eyes, clean angled profiles. His father stood a head and a half taller and twice as broad across the shoulders, all of it good useful muscle and well-proportioned bone.”

 

barnes

Steven Barnes (Los Angeles, 1 maart 1952)

 

De Franse schrijver Jean-Edern Hallier werd geboren op 1 maart 1936 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1960 richtte hij met Philippe Sollers het tijdschrift Tel Quel op. Drie jaar later publiceerde hij zijn eerste roman “Les Aventures d’une jeune fille”. Vervolgens werkte hij als uitgever bij Plon. In 1967 verscheen zijn tweede roman “Le Grand écrivain”. Na de studentenopstanden van 1968 startte hij het linkse blad L’Idiot international. Hij had een tijd nauw contact met François Mitterrand, maar voerde later oppositie tegen hem en hij was het ook die dreigde het bestaan van diens buitenechtelijke dochter Mazarine Pingeot te onthullen.

 

Uit: Fax d’outre-tombe : Voltaire tous les jours 1992-1996

 

Lettre d’outre-vie à Jean-Edern Hallier

 

Cher Jean-Edern,

Tu as choisi la postérité contre la carrière et, tu le sais, seule la mort change la vie en destin.

1997-2007, dix ans déjà !

Tu as laissé derrière toi des dizaines de livres, des centaines d’articles, de discours, de poèmes, de tableaux; tu as posé ta belle voix de «gorge profonde» dans des milliers d’émissions de télévision, des centaines d’heures de radio ; tu as accumulé un trésor de mots, de fulgurances, de pensées neuves, de coups de foudre amoureux, de «misérables petits tas de secrets» aussi, comme tout un chacun ; en un mot, tu es devenu, en tes admirations pour quelques grands maîtres qui t’ont précédé, un «milliardaire de l’or du temps».

Tes amis s’en souviennent ! Les bons comptes font-ils toujours les bons amis ?

Qui n’a pas été insulté par Jean-Edern Hallier a-t-il seulement existé ? écrivait drôlement l’un d’eux.

Qui analyse le plus froidement la société de la fin du siècle dernier ne peut, hélas ou tant mieux, échapper à toi… Incontournable, d’aucuns ont fait de toi un nouvel élément, feu, terre, eau, air, mêlés en une boue sublime, ou une glaise, dont on peut faire les vases de Soissons de l’amitié comme de l’inimitié. Attention, fragile ! Danger ?

 

Hallier

Jean-Edern Hallier (1 maart 1936 – 12 januari 1997)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en criticus William Dean Howells werd geboren op 1 maart 1837 in Martinsville, Ohio. Hij werd opgeleid tot letterzetter en leerde zichzelf tegelijkertijd vreemde talen. Daarnaast begon hij met het schrijven van gedichten en artikelen die hij publiceerde in de Ohio State Journal en de Atlantic Monthly. Een eerste succes behaalde hij met de buigrafie over de presidentskandidaat Abraham Lincoln. In 1871 werd Howells hoofduitgever van de Atlantic Monthly. Daarnaast bleef hij een uiterst productief schrijver

 

Uit: Boy Life (Earliest memories)

 

Some of my boy’s memories reach a time earlier than his third year, and relate to the little Ohio River hamlet where he was born, and where his mother’s people, who were river-faring folk, all lived. Every two or three years the river rose and flooded the village; and his grandmother’s household was taken out of the second-story window in a skiff; but no one minded a trivial inconvenience like that, any more than the Romans have minded the annual freshet of the Tiber for the last three or four thousand years. When the waters went down the family returned and scrubbed out the five or six inches of rich mud they had left. In the mean time it was a godsend to all boys of an age to enjoy it; but it was nothing out of the order of Providence. So, if my boy ever saw a freshet, it naturally made no impression[Pg 46] upon him. What he remembered was something much more important, and that was waking up one morning and seeing a peach-tree in bloom through the window beside his bed; and he was always glad that this vision of beauty was his very earliest memory. All his life he has never seen a peach-tree in bloom without a swelling of the heart, without some fleeting sense that

“Heaven lies about us in our infancy.”

 

Howells

William Dean Howells (1 maart 1837 – 11 mei 1920)

 

De Mauritiaanse dichter, schrijver en journalist Marcel Cabon werd geboren op 29 februari 1912 in Curepipe. Hij groeide op in het westen van het eiland. In 1931 verschenen zijn eerste gedichten. Hij werkte een tijd als journalist. Uit 1956 stamt zijn bekende epos Kélibé-Kéliba. Met zijn roman Namasté vestigde hij in 1965 definitief zijn naam in de literatuur.

 

Uit: Namasté

 

„Et tel était leur amour de la terre qu’une grande joie leur gonflait le cœur quand les cannes étaient mûres et que cent mille panaches fleurissaient la plaine, comme l’armée d’un maharajah.

Ces cannes fleurissaient parce qu’ils avaient défriché, pioché, sarclé, dépaillé — comme l’esclave, jadis —, parce qu’ils avaient donné leur sueur à cette terre qui n’était pas à eux, dont pas une parcelle ne serait peut-être à eux, malgré les rigueurs auxquelles ils s’astreignaient, malgré ces travaux de chaque heure et ce riz qu’ils se refusaient pour que le fils eût une case à lui …

Oui, combien de ces hommes n’avaient eu de terre (eux qui aimaient tant la terre !) que la fosse où on les avait couchés dans le langouti de tous les jours !

Mais y songeant et malgré la peine qui lui brûlait le cœur de tous ses souvenirs, Ram se disait que si chacun le voulait, une grande joie viendrait à tous les enfants de l’île d’aller ensemble sur les routes, de quelque sang qu’ils soient …

Les mauvais souvenirs, alors, ne seraient plus peut-être qu’un peu de poussière sous le pied …“

 

chabon

Marcel Cabon (29 februari 1912 – 31 januari 1972)

 

De Engelse dichter en vertaler  John Byrom werd geboren op 29 februari 1692 in Manchester. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 februari 2008.

 

Come, Savior, Jesus, from above

 

Come, Savior, Jesus, from above!

Assist me with Thy heavenly grace;

Empty my heart of earthly love,

And for Thyself prepare the place.

 

O let Thy sacred presence fill,

And set my longing spirit free!

Which pants to have no other will,

But day and night to feast on Thee.

 

While in this region here below,

No other good will I pursue:

I’ll bid this world of noise and show,

With all its glittering snares, adieu!

 

That path with humble speed I’ll seek,

In which my Savior’s footsteps shine,

Nor will I hear, nor will I speak,

Of any other love but Thine.

 

Henceforth may no profane delight

Divide this consecrated soul;

Possess it, Thou Who hast the right,

As Lord and Master of the whole.

 

 

(Oorspronkelijk: „Ven­ez, Jé­sus, mon sal­u­taire”

door An­toin­ette Bour­ig­non, vertaald door John Byrom)

 

Byrom

John Byrom (29 februari 1692 – 26 september 1763)

 

 Zie voor onderstaande schrijfster ook mijn blog van 1 maart 2007.

 

De Spaans-Amerikaanse schrijfster en dichteres Mercedes de Acosta werd geboren op 1 maart 1893 in New York.