Tag: JMH Berckmans

Evelyn Waugh, Jan Weiler, István Kemény, JMH Berckmans, John Hollander

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit: The Loved One

‘I will give the matter every consideration.’
‘I’ll leave our brochure with you. And now I must hand you over to the cosmetician.’
She left the room and Dennis at once forgot everything about her. He had seen her before everywhere. American mothers, Dennis reflected, presumably knew their daughters apart, as the Chinese were said subtly to distinguish one from another of their seemingly uniform race, but to the European eye the Mortuary Hostess was one with all her sisters of the air-liners and the reception-desks, one with Miss Poski at the Happier Hunting Ground. She was the standard product. A man could leave such a girl in a delicatessen shop in New York, fly three thousand miles and find her again in the cigar stall at San Francisco, just as he would find his favourite comic strip in the local paper; and she would croon the same words to him in moments of endearment and express the same views and preferences in moments of social discourse. She was convenient; but Dennis came of an earlier civilization with sharper needs. He sought the intangible, the veiled face in the fog, the silhouette at the lighted doorway, the secret graces of a body which hid itself under formal velvet. He did not covet the spoils of this rich continent, the sprawling limbs of the swimming-pool, the wide-open painted eyes and mouths under the arc-lamps. But the girl who now entered was unique. Not indefinably; the appropriate distinguishing epithet leapt to Dennis’s mind the moment he saw her: sole Eve in a bustling hygienic Eden, this girl was a decadent.
She wore the white livery of her calling; she entered the room, sat at the table and poised her fountain-pen with the same professional assurance as her predecessor’s, but she was what Dennis had vainly sought during a lonely year of exile.
Her hair was dark and straight, her brows wide, her skin transparent and untarnished by sun. Her lips were artificially tinctured, no doubt, but not coated like her sisters’ and clogged in all their delicate pores with crimson grease; they seemed to promise instead an unmeasured range of sensual converse. Her full face was oval, her profile pure and classical and light; her eyes greenish and remote, with a rich glint of lunacy.”.

 
Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)
Scene uit de gelijknamige film uit 1965 met Robert Morley (Sir Ambrose Abercombie) en Robert Morse (Dennis Barlow)

 

De Duitse schrijver en journalist Jan Weiler werd geboren op 28 oktober 1967 in Düsseldorf. Zie ook alle tags voor Jan Weiler op dit blog.

Uit: In meinem kleinen Land

“Was ich auch gefragt wurde: Und? Wie sind sie so, die Deutschen? Komische Frage, denn sie wird ja immer von Landsleuten gestellt. Die müssten ja selber wissen, wie sie sind. Trotzdem beantworte ich die Frage gerne, denn die Deutschen sind viel besser als ihr Ruf. Sie sind freundlich. Höflich. Hilfsbereit. Sie haben Humor.
Ich bin nie wirklich schlecht behandelt worden auf meiner Reise. Manchmal drücken sich die Leute einfach schlecht aus. Oder sie denken für einen Moment nicht nach. Oder sie haben den Kopf voll mit anderen Dingen und können gerade nicht höflich sein. Das kann einem überall passieren, nicht nur in Deutschland.
Einmal habe ich in einem IC eine Fahrkarte für den Nahverkehr dabeigehabt. Der Schaffner hat keinen Zuschlag von mir verlangt. Wissen Sie, wieso? Weil die Heizung im Zug nicht funktionierte. In Rostock haben sie extra für mich die Küche wieder aufgemacht, als ich spätabends zurück ins Hotel kam. Eine Taxifahrerin aus Ennepetal hat mich an einem Schneesamstag, als überall das Licht ausging, durchs Chaos gefahren, obwohl man sie woanders noch viel dringender gebraucht hätte.
Übrigens: Es gibt womöglich eine deutsche Mentalität, aber kaum eine regionale. Die Menschen lachen überall an den gleichen Stellen. Es gibt keine sturen Westfalen oder exaltierten Rheinländer oder schwierig zu erobernde Norddeutsche oder dankbare Thüringer. Alles Unsinn. Manchmal lachen die Zuschauer lauter, manchmal leiser, manchmal gibt es Szenenapplaus, manchmal nicht.
Könnten Sie einhundert deutsche Städte aus dem Kopf aufzählen? Ich hätte es nicht gekonnt. Dabei hat unser kleines Land sogar noch viel mehr. Ich habe jedenfalls einhundert gesehen, und die allermeisten haben mir gefallen. Und noch viel mehr als die Städte haben mir die Menschen gefallen, also die Deutschen. Man traut es sich beinahe nicht zu formulieren, aber im Großen und Ganzen haben wir es nicht schlecht getroffen.”

 

 
Jan Weiler (Düsseldorf, 28 oktober 1967)

 

De Hongaarse dichter en schrijver István Kemény werd geboren op 28 oktober 1961 in Boedapest. Zie ook alle tags voor István Kemény op dit blog.

 

Der Vater, wie er im Buche steht

Gib mir: ein Geheimnis. Einen Rat. Eine Stellung bei Hofe
Oder gib mir den einen, den Geheimrat bei Hofe
Einen, der altmodisch, bärtig  und  korpulent  ist
Ein Realist der gleichwohl Wahrhaftiges spricht
Ein alter Schulfreund längst verstorbener Maler
Die Traumrolle jedes Schauspielers mit erfahrenem Alter
Einen, der heimlich bewundert wird von jedermann
Gegenstand vieler Witze, über die man herzhaft lachen kann
Schon zweimal verhasst, vier oder fünfmal nur langweilig
womöglich wird er bald wieder als Minister vereidigt
Seine Affären waren vor kurzem noch in aller Munde
Dass er ab und zu trinkt, macht unter Freunden die Runde
Auf großen Festen plaudert er haltlos und mit Genuss
doch fremde Plattitüden hält er diskret unter Verschluss
Einmal die Woche bittet er den Philosophen zu Tische
Als Amateurhistoriker pflegt er seine geistige Frische
Ob Tabakpfeife, oder Epoche, er kennt alle Details
nicht ein deutscher Fürstenname, den er nicht weiß
Er hat auch Schlechtes getan, er erkennt das Vergehen
doch kennt keine Reue, er macht nichts ungeschehen.
Er weiss, er müsste unfehlbar sein, weiss er ist es nicht
und könnte mich dennoch töten lassen, oder auch dich.
Ich wüsste, er sorgte für mich, auch wenn ich fremd wär
alles könnte ich sein, mich quälte keine Freiheit mehr.

 

Vertaald door Orsolya Kalász en Monika Rinck

 

Visiting The King

I know you are preparing for battle, Sir,
and your time is precious, for maybe it will be your
last night, your captains are waiting, because
even your strategy is incomplete, and your servants
are making your luxurious, though light and perhaps
last feast, and girls in their colorful tents
are beautifying themselves in a hurry,
you do not have much time left to chatter, especially
because I’ve come from the enemy camp,
I’ve grown up and learned there, there I was in love,
and there is my past, though I am not a traitor,
but a traveller, a wanderer,
wise and impudent, very brave at the moment
and even a bit surprised at that, but neither
mad nor drunk, and I do not want to kill
or to divert you, I’ve simply come
to ask, whether you send
a message towards the very edge,
since I am just on my way, to
call or shout from over there,
as I’m bored with God keeping silent.

Vertaald door Gábor Mezei

 

 
István Kemény (Boedapest, 28 oktober 1961)

 

De Vlaamse schrijver JMH Berckmans (Jean-Marie Henri) werd geboren in Leopoldsburg op 28 oktober 1953. Zie ook alle tags voor JMH Berckmans op dit blog.

Uit: Een beetje voorbij het huis van Elsschot

“Het zou trouwens de eerste keer niet zijn dat de witte mens de dikke koe haar smoel ineen timmert. Het zou de eerste keer niet zijn dat de witte mens het kot afbreekt. De witte mens heeft problemen. Hij gaat met z’n problemen naar Beretta maar Beretta heeft al honderdduizend keer gezegd dat ze hem niet kan helpen. Hij is al bij Landuyt geweest en Landuyt kon hem ook niet helpen. Hij heeft al in de doos gezeten en zelfs van de doos is hij niet wijzer geworden en op den duur hebben ze ‘m losgelaten. Tegen hem zegt iedereen witte mens, al heet hij eigenlijk Paul Serge Rosette, naar zijn peter en zijn meter en zijn doodgeboren broertje.
In de voorkamer ligt Mie Bees al jaren op sterven maar nu gaat ze het niet lang meer maken. Camilla de gorilla heeft de onderpastoor besteld voor de belezing van de stervenden. Alle anderen wachten in spanning af. De priester laat op zich wachten.
Het wordt steeds later. Misschien komt hij morgen pas, misschien zijn er vandaag te veel stervenden in de wereld van de levenden.
Carlos is vrijer van de dikke koe en Ludo Cleerbout is de vrijer van de zwarte heks en behalve de zwarte heks heeft niemand het hoog op met Ludo Cleerbout vanwege z’n maniertjes en z’n smoeltje en z’n vele, vele praatjes voor de vaak. Hij werkt aan de band in een autovelgenfabriek en brengt voor het overige de tijd zo maar een beetje zoek met platen draaien op fuiven en rondhangen tot de nacht in de dag verkleurt. Als de zwarte heks van school af is willen ze trouwen en ergens in de randstad gaan wonen met hun meubeltjes en hun stereo en hun autootje in de box. Hun Volkswagentje. Maar eerst wil ze de school af maken. De handelshumaniora op Mère Jeanne in de Tabaksvest. Zodat ze een baantje vindt op een kantoortje en ganse dagen pennen likken kan en haar zestienjarige kont verslijten tot er sleet op zit en ze veulens en kalveren baren kan.
En ten slotte is er het jong Veerle, maar het jong Veerle is bijkomstig, het jong Veerle is nog maar zeven, het jong Veerle heeft nergens weet van, het jong Veerle snapt toch de ballen van wat er hier allemaal aan de hand is. Het jong Veerle snapt de ballen van Big Jim.”

 
JMH Berckmans (28 oktober 1953 – 31 augustus 2008)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter en criticus John Hollander werd geboren op 28 oktober 1929 in New York. Zie ook alle tags voor John Hollander op dit blog.

 

The Mad Potter (Fragment)

Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay
Bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke
On the old one’s ragged end. I bite my tongue
As the end of me—of my rope of stuff and nonsense
(The nonsense held, it was the stuff that broke),
Of bones and light, of levity and crime,
Of reddish clay and hope—still bides its time.

Each of my pots is quite unusable,
Even for contemplating as an object
Of gross unuse. In its own mode of being
Useless, though, each of them remains unique,
Subject to nothing, and themselves unseeing,
Stronger by virtue of what makes them weak.

I pound at all my clay. I pound the air.
This senseless lump, slapped into something like
Something, sits bound around by my despair.
For even as the great Creator’s free
Hand shapes the forms of life, so—what? This pot,
Unhollowed solid, too full of itself,
Runneth over with incapacity.
I put it with the others on the shelf.

These tiny cups will each provide one sip
Of what’s inside them, aphoristic prose
Unwilling, like full arguments, to make
Its points, then join them in extended lines
Like long draughts from the bowl of a deep lake.
The honey of knowledge, like my milky slip,
Firms slowly up against what merely flows.

 


John Hollander (28 oktober 1929 – 17 augustus 2013)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 28e oktober ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

Evelyn Waugh, Jan Weiler, JMH Berckmans, John Hollander, Al Galidi, Uwe Tellkamp, Johannes Daniel Falk, Karl Philipp Conz, Arjen van Veelen

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit:The Loved One

“The benefits of the plan are twofold” — she was speaking by the book now with a vengeance — “financial and psychological. You, Mr. Barlow, are now approaching your optimum earning phase. You are no doubt making provision of many kinds for your future — investments, insurance policies and so forth. You plan to spend your declining days in security but have you considered what burdens you may not be piling up for those you leave behind? Last month, Mr. Barlow, a husband and wife were here consulting us about Before Need Provision. They were prominent citizens in the prime of life with two daughters just budding into womanhood. They heard all particulars, they were impressed and said they would return in a few days to complete arrangements. Only next day those two passed on, Mr. Barlow, in an automobile accident, and instead of them there came two distraught orphans to ask what arrangements their parents had made. We were obliged to inform them that no arrangements had been made. In the hour of their greatest need those children were left comfortless. How different it would have been had we been able to say to them: ‘Welcome to all the Happiness of Whispering Glades.’ “
“Yes, but you know I haven’t any children. Besides I am a foreigner. I have no intention of dying here.”
“Mr. Barlow, you are afraid of death.”
“No, I assure you.”
“It is a natural instinct, Mr. Barlow, to shrink from the unknown. But if you discuss it openly and frankly you remove morbid reflexions. That is one of the things the psycho-analysts have taught us. Bring your dark fears into the light of the common day of the common man, Mr. Barlow. Realize that death is not a private tragedy of your own but the general lot of man. As Hamlet so beautifully writes: ‘Know that death is common; all that live must die.’ Perhaps you think it morbid and even dangerous to give thought to this subject, Mr. Barlow, the contrary has been proved by scientific investigation. Many people let their vital energy lag prematurely and their earning capacity diminish simply through fear of death. By removing that fear they actually increase their expectation of life. Choose now, at leisure and in health, the form of final preparation you require, pay for it while you are best able to do so, shed all anxiety. Pass the buck, Mr. Barlow; Whispering Glades can take it.”

 

 
Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)
Scene uit de gelijknamige film uit 1965 met Robert Morse als Dennis Barlow (links)

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Evelyn Waugh, Jan Weiler, JMH Berckmans, John Hollander, Al Galidi, Uwe Tellkamp, Johannes Daniel Falk, Karl Philipp Conz

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit:Brideshead Revisited

“Sebastian lived at Christ Church, high in Meadow Buildings. He was alone when I came, peeling a plover’s egg taken from the large nest of moss in the centre of his table.
‘I’ve just counted them,’ he said. ‘There were five each and two over, so I’m having the two. I’m unaccountably hungry today. I put myself unreservedly in the hands of Dolbear and Goodall, and feel so drugged that I’ve begun to believe that the whole of yesterday evening was a dream. Please don’t wake me up.
He was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind.
His room was filled with a. strange jumble of objects—a harmonium in a gothic case, an elephant’s-foot waste-paper basket, a dome of wax fruit, two disproportionately large Sèvres vases, framed drawings by Daumier—made all the more incongruous by the austere college furniture and the large luncheon table. His chimney-piece was covered in cards of invitation from London hostesses.

 

 
Anthony Anfrews (Sebastian) en Jeremy Irons (Charles) in de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

 

‘That beast Hobson has put Aloysius next door,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s as well, as there wouldn’t have been any plovers’ eggs for him. D’you know, Hobson hates Aloysius. I wish I had a scout like yours. He was sweet to me this morning where some people might have been quite strict.’
The party assembled. There were three Etonian freshmen, mild, elegant, detached young men who had all been to a dance in London the night before, and spoke of it as though it had been the funeral of a near but unloved kinsman. Each as he came into the room made first for the plovers’ eggs, then noticed Sebastian and then myself with a polite lack of curiosity which seemed to say: ‘We should not dream of being so offensive as to suggest that you never met us before.’
‘The first this year,’ they said. ‘Where do you get them?’
‘Mummy sends them from Brideshead. They always lay early for her.’
When the eggs were gone and we were eating the lobster Newburg, the last guest arrived.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t get away before. I was lunching with my p-ppreposterous tutor. He thought it ‘was very odd my leaving when I did. I told him I had to change for F-f-footer.’

 

 
Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

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Evelyn Waugh, Jan Weiler, JMH Berckmans, John Hollander, Al Galidi, Uwe Tellkamp

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

‘It wasn’t one of my party. It was someone from out of college.’
‘Well, it’s just as nasty clearing it up, whoever it was.’
‘There’s five shillings on the sideboard.’
‘So I saw and thank you, but I’d rather not have the money and not have the mess, any morning.’
I took my gown and left him to his task. I still frequented the lecture-room in those days, and it was after eleven when I returned to college. I found my room full of flowers; what looked like, and, in fact, was, the entire day’s stock of a market-stall stood in every conceivable vessel in every part of the room. Lunt was secreting the last of them in brown paper preparatory to taking them home.
‘Lunt, what is all this?’
‘The gentleman from last night, sir, he left a note for you.’
The note was written in conté crayon on a whole sheet of my choice Whatman H.P. drawing paper: I am very contrite. Aloysius won’t speak to me until he sees I am forgiven, so please come to luncheon today. Sebastian Flyte. It was typical of him, I reflected, to assume I knew where he lived; but, then, I did know.

 

 
Anthony Anfrews (Sebastian), Diana Quick (Julia) en Jeremy Irons (Charles) in de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

 

‘A most amusing gentleman, I’m sure it’s quite a pleasure to clean up after him. I take it you’re lunching out, sir. I told Mr Collins and Mr Partridge so—they wanted to have their commons in here with you.’
‘Yes, Lunt, lunching out.’
That luncheon party—for party it proved to be—was the beginning o f a new epoch in my life.
I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”

 

 
Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

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Evelyn Waugh, Jan Weiler, JMH Berckmans, John Hollander, Al Galidi, Uwe Tellkamp

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

“I threw open my windows and from the quad outside came the not uncommon sounds of bibulous laughter and unsteady steps. A voice said: “Hold up”; another, “Come on”; another, “Plenty of time . . . House . . . till Tom stops ringing”; and another, clearer than the rest, “D’you know I feel most unaccountably unwell. I must leave you a minute,” and there appeared at my window the face I knew to be Sebastian’s — but not as I had formerly seen it, alive and alight with gaiety; he looked at me for a moment with unseeing eyes and then, leaning forward well into the room, he was sick.
It was not unusual for dinner parties to end in that way; there was in fact a recognized tariff on such occasions for the comfort of the scout; we were all learning, by trial and error, to carry our wine. There was also a kind of insane and endearing orderliness about Sebastian’s choice, in his extremity, of an open window. But, when all is said, it remained an unpropitious meeting.

 

 
Anthony Andrews als Sebastian in de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

 

His friends bore him to the gate and, in a few minutes, his host, an amiable Etonian of my year, returned to apologize. He, too, was tipsy and his explanations were repetitive and, towards the end, tearful. “The wines were too various,” he said; “it was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all.”
“Yes,” I said, but it was with a sense of grievance that I faced Lunt’s reproaches next morning.
“A couple of jugs of mulled claret between the five of you,” Lunt said, “and this had to happen. Couldn’t even get to the window. Those that can’t keep it down are better without it.”

 

 
Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)
Waugh als student in Oxford, 1923

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Evelyn Waugh, JMH Berckmans, John Hollander, Al Galidi, Uwe Tellkamp

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

“… The whole argument from Significant Form stands or falls by volume. If you allow Cézanne to represent a third dimension on his two-dimensional canvas, then you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty in the spaniel’s eye”—but it was not until Sebastian, idly turning the page of Clive Bell’s Art, read: “‘Does anyone feel the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or a picture?’ Yes. I do,” that my eyes were opened.
I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour which seemed to know no bounds. My first sight of him was as we passed in the door of Germer’s, and, on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large Teddy-bear.
“That,” said the barber, as I took his chair, “was Lord Sebastian Flyte. A most amusing young gentleman.

 

Jeremy Irons en Anthony Andrews als Charles en Sebastian
In de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

 

 “Apparently,” I said coldly.
“The Marquis of Marchmain’s second boy. His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, went down last term. Now he was very different, a very quiet gentleman, quite like an old man. What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hair brush for his Teddy-bear; it had to have very stiff bristles, not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky. He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he’s having ‘Aloysius’ engraved on it—that’s the bear’s name.” The man, who, in his time, had had ample chance to tire of undergraduate fantasy, was plainly captivated by him. I, however, remained censorious and subsequent glimpses of Sebastian, driving in a hansom cab and dining at the George in false whiskers, did not soften me, although Collins, who was reading Freud, had a number of technical terms to cover everything.
Nor, when at last we met, were the circumstances propitious. It was shortly before midnight in early March; I had been entertaining the college intellectuals to mulled claret; the fire was roaring, the air of my room heavy with smoke and spice, and my mind weary with metaphysics.”

 

Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

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Evelyn Waugh, JMH Berckmans, Uwe Tellkamp

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

“Finally, just as he was going, he said, “One last point. Change your rooms.” They were large, with deeply recessed windows and painted, eighteenth-century panelling; I was lucky as a freshman to get them. “I’ve seen many a man ruined through having ground-floor rooms in the front quad,” said my cousin with deep gravity. “People start dropping in. They leave their gowns here and come and collect them before hall; you start giving them sherry. Before you know where you are, you’ve opened a free bar for all the undesirables of the college.”
I do not know that I ever, consciously, followed any of this advice. I certainly never changed my rooms; there were gillyflowers growing below the windows which on summer evenings filled them with fragrance.

 

Jeremy Irons als Charles en Anthony Andrews als Sebastian
in de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

 

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door. I should like to think—indeed I sometimes do think—that I decorated those rooms with Morris stuffs and Arundel prints and that my shelves were filled with seventeenth-century folios and French novels of the second empire in Russia-leather and watered-silk. But this was not the truth. On my first afternoon I proudly hung a reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” over the fire and set up a screen, painted by Roger Fry with a Provencal landscape, which I had bought inexpensively when the Omega workshops were sold up. I displayed also a poster by McKnight Kauffer and Rhyme Sheets from the Poetry Bookshop, and, most painful to recall, a porcelain figure of Polly Peachum which stood between black tapers on the chimney-piece. My books were meagre and commonplace—Roger Fry’s Vision and Design; the Medici Press edition of A Shropshire Lad; Eminent Victorians; some volumes of Georgian Poetry; Sinister Street; and South Wind—and my earliest friends fitted well into this background; they were Collins, a Wykehamist, an embryo don, a man of solid reading and childlike humour, and a small circle of college intellectuals, who maintained a middle course of culture between the flamboyant “aesthetes” and the proletarian scholars who scrambled fiercely for facts in the lodging houses of the Iffley Road and Wellington Square. It was by this circle that I found myself adopted during my first term; they provided the kind of company I had enjoyed in the sixth form at school, for which the sixth form had prepared me; but even in the earliest days, when the whole business of living at Oxford, with rooms of my own and my own cheque book, was a source of excitement, I felt at heart that this was not all that Oxford had to offer.
At Sebastian’s approach these grey figures seemed quietly to fade into the landscape and vanish, like highland sheep in the misty heathen Collins had exposed the fallacy of modern aesthetics to me: “…

 

Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

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Evelyn Waugh, JMH Berckmans, Uwe Tellkamp

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Evelyn Waugh op dit blog.

 

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

„I thanked him.
“Yes, it’s indulgent of me, but it all comes out of capital, you know. . . . I suppose this is the time I should give you advice. I never had any myself except once from your cousin Alfred. Do you know in the summer before I was going up, your cousin Alfred rode over to Boughton especially to give me a piece of advice? And do you know what that advice was? ‘Ned,’ he said, ’there’s one thing I must beg of you. Always wear a tall hat on Sundays during term. It is by that, more than anything, that a man is judged.’ And do you know,” continued my father, snuffling deeply, “I always did? Some men did, some didn’t. I never saw any difference between them or heard it commented on, but I always wore mine. It only shows what effect judicious advice can have, properly delivered at the right moment. I wish I had some for you, but I haven’t.”

 

Anthony Andrews en Jeremy Irons als Sebastian en Charles

In de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981


My cousin Jasper made good the loss; he was the son of my father’s elder brother, to whom he referred more than once, only half facetiously, as “the Head of the Family”; he was in his fourth year and, the term before, had come within appreciable distance of getting his rowing blue; he was secretary of the Canning and president of the J.C.R. – a considerable person in college. He called on me formally during my first week and stayed to tea; he ate a very heavy meal of honey-buns, anchovy toast and Fuller’s walnut cake, then he lit his pipe and, lying back in the basket-chair, laid down the rules of conduct which I should follow; he covered most subjects; even to-day I could repeat much of what he said, word for word. “. . . You’re reading History? A perfectly respectable school. The very worst is English Literature and the next worst is Modern Greats. You want either a first or a fourth. There is no value in anything between. Time spent on a good second is time thrown away. You should go to the best lectures – Arkwright on Demosthenes for instance – irrespective of whether they are in your school or not. . . . Clothes. Dress as you do in a country house. Never wear a tweed coat and flannel trousers – always a suit. And go to a London tailor; you get better cut and longer credit. . . . Clubs. Join the Carlton now and the Grid at the beginning of your second year. If you want to run for the Union – and it’s not a bad thing to do – make your reputation outside first, at the Canning or the Chatham, and begin by speaking on the paper. . . . Keep clear of Boar’s Hill . . .” The sky over the opposing gables glowed and then darkened; I put more coal on the fire and turned on the light, revealing in their respectability his London-made plus fours and his Leander tie. . . . “Don’t treat dons like schoolmasters; treat them as you would the vicar at home. . . . You’ll find you spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first. . . . Beware of the Anglo-Catholics – they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents. In fact, steer clear of all the religious groups; they do nothing but harm. . . .”

 

Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

Portret door Henry Lamb, 1929

Lees verder “Evelyn Waugh, JMH Berckmans, Uwe Tellkamp” →

Evelyn Waugh, JMH Berckmans, Uwe Tellkamp, John Hollander, Al Galidi, Johannes Daniel Falk, Karl Philipp Conz

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Uit: Brideshead Revisited

 “Isn’t it early?” said Sebastian. “The women are still doing whatever women do to themselves before they come downstairs. Sloth has undone them. We’re away. God bless Hardcastle.”
“Whoever he may be.”
“He thought he was coming with us. Sloth undid him too. Well, I did tell him ten. He’s a very gloomy man in my college. He leads a double life. At least I assume he does. He couldn’t go on being Hardcastle, day and night, always, could he? Or he’d die of it. He says he knows my father, which is impossible.”
“Why?”
“No one knows Papa. He’s a social leper. Hadn’t you heard?”
“It’s a pity neither of us can sing,” I said.
At Swindon we turned off the main road and, as the sun mounted high, we were among dry-stone walls and ashlar houses. It was about eleven when Sebastian, without warning, turned the car into a cart track and stopped. It was hot enough now to make us seek the shade. On a sheep-cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine – as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together – and we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian’s eyes on the leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.
“Just the place to bury a crock of gold,” said Sebastian. “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”

 brideshead

Jeremy Irons en Anthony Andrews als Charles en Sebastian
In de tv-serie Brideshead Revisited uit 1981

 

 This was my third term since matriculation, but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian, which had happened, by chance, in the middle of the term before. We were in different colleges and came from different schools; I might well have spent my three or four years in the University and never have met him, but for the chance of his getting drunk one evening in my college and of my having ground-floor rooms in the front quadrangle.
I had been warned against the dangers of these rooms by my cousin Jasper, who alone, when I first came up, thought me a suitable subject for detailed guidance. My father offered me none. Then, as always, he eschewed serious conversation with me. It was not until I was within a fortnight of going up that he mentioned the subject at all; then he said, shyly and rather slyly: “I’ve been talking about you. I met your future Warden at the Athenæum. I wanted to talk about Etruscan notions of immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for the working-class; so we compromised and talked about you. I asked him what your allowance should be. He said, ‘Three hundred a year; on no account give him more; that’s all most men have.’ I thought that a deplorable answer. I had more than most men when I was up, and my recollection is that nowhere else in the world and at no other time, do a few hundred pounds, one way or the other, make so much difference to one’s importance and popularity. I toyed with the idea of giving you six hundred,” said my father, snuffling a little, as he did when he was amused, “but I reflected that, should the Warden come to hear of it, it might sound deliberately impolite. So I shall give you five hundred and fifty.”

waugh.jpg

 Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

 

De Vlaamse schrijver JMH Berckmans (Jean-Marie Henri) werd geboren in Leopoldsburg op 28 oktober 1953. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Uit: De wortel in de brievenbus

„Je weet niet wat het is. Nog steeds niet. Na al het dolen en al het dwalen. Door die miljoenen straten van die duizenden steden. Overal ter wereld. Na al het schorremorrie waaraan je overbodige porties van je weinige nog resterende vrienschap hebt geschonken en die je allemaal verraden hebben, de ene na de andere, sommigen overdag, de meesten ’s nachts. Wellicht zal je ’t ook nooit weten. Ik zeg wellicht. Waarschijnlijk. Misschien. Eventueel. Mogelijkerwijs. Bijwoorden van, van wat eigenlijk, bijwoorden van twijfel en wanhoop. Bijwoorden van radeloosheid. Van kommer en kwel, tot je er krom en knoestig bijloopt en de lui in de straten zeggen kijk daar heb je die sukkelaar weer. Die met z’n beige anorak en z’n vettige jeans. Laat ze maar zeggen. Het zijn de lui in de straten maar. Het zijn Willy en Jeanine en Leo en Sylvia maar. En die zeggen zoveel. Die zeggen dat de zon schijnt of dat het regent. Terwijl het gewoon maar sneeuwt of de apocalyps is losgebarsten en het einde van de tijd nabij is. Dat we moeten verschijnen voor de Alwijze en Hij over ons zal oordelen. Dat sommigen aan z’n rechter en sommige anderen aan z’n linkerhand zullen zitten. Die zeggen dat binnenkort de regering valt, of op z’n minst door de Wetstraat gaat strompelen. Ze weten alles van alles en ze kennen iedereen. Dat helpt. Ze hoeven nooit nog met iemand kennis te maken. Nooit nog iemand de hand te drukken.

Misschien dat het je ooit in een flits te binnen schiet, terwijl je ergens straalbezopen in een goot ligt, op de voorlaatste bank van de bus naar het stempellokaal zit te twijfelen aan jezelf, aan de zin van je daden, aan de geldigheid van je roserode stempel straks, terwijl je ergens staat te pissen in een pissijn, in het holst van de nacht in een gore kroeg. Allicht Jean-Jaques.“

berckmans

JMH Berckmans (28 oktober 1953 – 31 augustus 2008)

 

De Duitse schrijver Uwe Tellkamp werd geboren op 28 oktober 1968 in Dresden.Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2008 en ook ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Uit: The Tower (Vertaald door Rebecca K. Morrison)

“Ridged like a karst landscape, like the debris of jagged piled up ice floes, the island of coal stretched out in front of the four visitors; three of them showed their passes at the bridge control, then, when Richard had lowered little Philip from his shoulders and slipped his hand into Regine’s, they made their way over the ‘Copper Sister’ to the offices beyond. The mist hung low over Ostrom, dampening the whistle of ‘Black Mathilda’ as she signalled her arrival through the tunnel at the heating works. The snow on the bridge had been trodden flat by numerous shoes, even at this early morning hour; it was the first Tuesday of the month – administration day. Meno shielded his eyes, the whiteness was dazzling, and he noted the first sharp shafts of the March sun striking off the heavily sloping, frost-encrusted roofs of the buildings, their frozen windows now clear as water, now a concentric whirl, like the splintering drops of dew caught in a spider’s web, igniting sparks, flaring into a sudden confusion of light and a multi-faceted prismatic display that was echoed countless times in the broken axels of the buildings’ depths: it found its counterpart in the compressed slabs of quartz, the ridges, the needles of ice.
They had arrived before the doors opened and joined the queue that stretched from the colonnaded entrance as far as the Marx and Engels monument area in the centre of the courtyard; cleared of snow, its grey concrete swept clean, the space could hardly be bridged by a human voice. Marx and Engels were holding books of bronze which they appeared to be reading; crows settled on their heads and the sentry on duty, not permitted to budge, tried to shoo them away with regular clicks of his tongue. Some of those waiting looked on with pity and raised their hands ready to clap, only to be discouraged by acquaintances less benevolently inclined, their gaze fixed on the colonnaded entrance. Richard gave up counting at ‘one hundred’, opened his bag, reassured himself that the report was still there (but who could have taken it – he had packed the bag himself and checked before leaving); Meno had opened his worn briefcase, too, and was rummaging through papers.”

 tellkamp.jpg

Uwe Tellkamp (Dresden, 28 oktober 1968)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter en criticus John Hollander werd geboren op 28 oktober 1929 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

The Lady of the Castle

Venus Pudica stands, bent. Where her hand is
Cupping her marble mound a mystery has
Come into being as the sculptor hides what
Stone could not show yet,

Nor bronze expound. The goddess may be guarding
Herself, or in a special mode of pointing
Out (should we call it “curving in” ?) her temple,
Teaching her children

The central and precious, where they may be found.
Or indeed, as the girls say, she is hiding
Nothing, nor instructing—she is caressing
That which she barely

Touches, warming those feelings which for her are
Wisdom blossoming even within marble.
What her maker buried she loves, and thereby
We are revealed it.

Far in the minimal North, some contracted
Hand or eye has carved into senseless clunch an
Impudent and schematic presence, done in
Primal intaglio,

A circle head perched on a larger circle
Of lady body, spidery legs drawn up
And outward showing off on the church tower
Under the clock, and

Cut in a sort of Linear C, her slit.
Her hands touch nothing but her knees held open.
It is not she who joys in it, nor teaches;
But from beneath her

A very well-hung personage indeed is
Climbing up toward her, as if far from having
Merely no words for things, their sculptor had no
Method of using

Images for them: no things, only actions.
And thus translated into language her wedge
Would be a “Let’s-get-up-on-her-and-in-there.”
Hieroglyphic

Of nature’s own cuneiform, she sits high
But almost hiding in the irrelevance
Of a religious building now to the young
Mums of the village.

Ignored, then, or misread by mythographers
—Myopically concluding that a corpus
Christi lies beneath a bungled cross—as a
Crude Deposition,

She with her terrible thin cut is not to
Be any the less feared by those who read signs
And remember instances of their wide truths
Narrowed in darkness:

Hers is the closed door into the stone again.
The soft traps having long since sprung, the marble
Self-adoring dolls long crumbled, hers is the
Linear kingdom.

hollander.jpg

John Hollander (New York,  28 oktober 1929)

 

De Nederlandstalige dichter en schrijver Al Galidi (eigenlijk Rodhan Al Khalidi) is van Iraakse afkomst. Zijn geboortedatum is onbekend, omdat zulke gegevens niet geregistreerd worden en verjaardagen niet gevierd worden in zijn streek van herkomst, maar valt waarschijnlijk in 1971. Geboren werd hij in Al-Najaf (een klein dorpje in het Zuiden van Irak). Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

Wandeling door Harlingen

Zonder hond
zonder kat
zonder fiets
loop ik alleen naar zee.
Ik groet een oude man
en zijn hond antwoordt: “Hij is doof.”

Ik loop door
en groet een hond.
Zijn baas antwoordt:
“Hij houdt niet van vreemden.”

Ik blijf lopen en zie een fiets een vrouw leiden.
Ik ren en zie een hond die zijn baas uitlaat.
Ik wandel en zie een hond fietsen.

Ik kijk door een raam, misschien zie ik iemand,
maar ik zie alleen een kat naar me kijken
die roept: “wat een wereld!”

Ik doe mijn ogen dicht en ga verder.
O, wat moeilijk om in Harlingen te wonen
zonder hond
zonder kat
zonder fiets.

 

Boer

Geen aardappel
probeerde ooit zelfmoord te plegen.
Geen komkommer
zei ooit:
“Ik ben geen komkommer, ik ben een banaan.”
Geen tomaat zal zeggen:
“Ik wil niet in de soep, ik wil in de sla.”
Geen gehandicapte wortels
geen krankzinnige paprika’s

Daarom ben ik boer.

 galidi

Al Galidi (Al-Najaf, 1971)

 

De Duitse dichter, schrijver en theoloog Johannes Daniel Falk werd geboren op 28 oktober 1768 in Danzig. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Das Ungewitter im Walde
An Heloisen.

Bin ich allein auf dem Planeten
Mit Heloisen Hand in Hand?
Ob Blitze rings den Himmel röthen,
An deinem Busen ist mein Stand.

An diesen Pol will ich mich heften,
Nun rolle Welt! – ich halte dich.
So triff mit allen Himmelskräften,
Komm, Tod! triff Blizt! vernichte mich.

Mein süßes Licht in Lebensnächten,
Mein holder Wunsch, der mich entzückt,
Der darf getrost mit Göttern rechten,
Der Engel an sein Herz gedrückt.

Siehst du der Lilie Schnee am Stengel,
Sie nickt, sie wankt so lieberoth,
Und von den Himmeln steigt ein Engel,
Und küßt in Feuer sie zu Tod.

So will auch ich im Zeitenflusse
Mein Liebstes auf der Welt umfahn,
So faßt mit Heloisens Kusse
Verzehrend Himmelsgluth mich an.

Ertödtend liebliches Vergnügen!
Was fürchtest du von dem Geschwätz
Der Schwalben, die am Wasser fliegen?
Verschwiegenheit ist ihr Gesetz.

Warum erbebt vor Schamerröthen
Dein süß verschüchtertes Gesicht?
Des Himmels Donner kann uns tödten:
Verrathen? nein, das will er nicht!

Komm, reich’ – ein Engel über Sternen
Mir, Heloise, deine Hand:
Der darf, was Himmel ist, nicht lernen,
Der ihn in deinen Armen fand.

falk 

Johannes Daniel Falk (28 oktober 1768 – 14 februari 1826)

 

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Karl Philipp Conz werd geboren op 28 oktober 1762 in Lorch. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008 en en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2009.

Trostlied

Und wenn es trüb und unstöt geht,
Des Himmels Wolken sich verdüstern,
Und bangend Weid’ und Esche flüstern,
Vorm Nordwind, der sie rauh umweht;
Zum Himmel doch schaut auf der Glaube,
Mit Augen, gleich der frommen Taube.

Auch ist im Herzen nimmer fern,
Wo Glaube wohnet und Vertrauen,
Des Trostes Samen anzubauen,
Der Liebe milder Hoffnungsstern.
Der selbst die Sonn’ ist und in trüben
Eewölken stralt, muß ewig lieben.

Hast du verschuldet nicht die Roth,
Die dich umdrängt; gelaßner tragen
Kannst du sie leicht, und ihr entschlagen
Wird nach der Prüfung dich der Gott,
Zur Stunde, denn er kennt die rechten,
Der Licht oft schafft aus Mitternächten.

Auch in der Trübsal thut sich kund
Sein Vaterherz, das Herz der Herzen.
Kann Liebe Liebe je verscherzen?
Was ausgesprochen hat sein Mund,
Das sprach er aus für alle Zeiten,
Und Altes kann dir Neues deuten.

Mehr als die Gaben liebe nur
Den Geber immer aller Gaben,
Und mehr am Schöpfer Freude haben
Mußt du denn an der Kreatur;
So bleibt in deines Herzens Nähe
Der hohe Frieden aus der Hohe.

 conz

Karl Philipp Conz (28 oktober 1762 – 20 juni 1827)
Lorch

Evelyn Waugh, JMH Berckmans, Uwe Tellkamp, John Hollander, Johannes Daniel Falk, Karl Philipp Conz

De Britse schrijver Evelyn Waugh werd geboren in Londen op 28 oktober 1903. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

Uit: Decline And Fall

 “So you’re the Doctor’s hired assassin, eh? Well, I hope you keep a firm hand on my toad of a son. How’s he doin’?”
“Quite well,” said Paul.
“Nonsense!” said Lady Circumference. “The boy’s a dunderhead. If he wasn’t he wouldnt’ be here. He wants beatin’ and hittin’ and knockin’ about generally, and then he’ll be no good. That grass is shockin’ bad on the terrace, Doctor; you ought to sand it down and resow it, but you’ll have to take that cedar down if you ever want it to grow properly at the side. I hate cuttin’ down a tree – like losin’ a tooth – but you have to choose, tree or grass; you can’t keep ‘em both. What d’you pay your head man?”
As she was talking Lord Circumference emerged from the shadows and shook Paul’s hand. He had a long fair moustache and large watery eyes which reminded Paul a little of Mr. Prendergast.
“How do you do?” he said.
“How do you do?” said Paul.
“Fond of sport, eh?” he said. “I mean these sort of sports?”
“Oh, yes,” said Paul. “I think they’re so good for the boys.”
“Do you? Do you think that?” said Lord Circumference very earnestly; “do you think they’re good for the boys?”
“Yes,” said Paul; “don’t you?”
“Me? Yes, oh, yes. I think so, too. Very good for the boys.”
“So useful in case of a war or anything,” said Paul.
“D’you think so? D’you really and truly think so? That there is going to be another war, I mean?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it; aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course, I’m sure of it too. And that awful bread, and people coming on to one’s own land and telling one what one’s to do with one’s own butter and milk, and commandeering one’s horses! Oh, yes, all over again! My wife shot her hunters rather than let them go to the army. And girl’s in breeches on all the farms! All over again! Who do you think it will be this time?”
“The Americans,” said Paul stoutly.
“No, indeed, I hope not. We had German prisoners on two of the farms. That wasn’t so bad, but if they start putting Americans on my land, I’ll just refuse to stand it. My daughter brought an American down to luncheon the other day, and, do you know …?”
“Dig it and dung it,” said Lady Circumference. “Only it’s got to be dug deep, mind. Now how did your calceolarias do last year?”
“I really have no idea,” said the Doctor. “Flossie, how did our calceolarias do?”
“Lovely,” said Flossie.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Lady Circumference. “Nobody’s calceolarias did well last year.”
“Shall we adjourn to the playing fields?” said the Doctor. “I expect they are all waiting for us.”
Talking cheerfully, the party crossed the hall and went down the steps.
“Your drive’s awful wet,” said Lady Circumference. “I expect there’s a blocked pipe somewhere. Sure it ain’t sewage?”
“I was never any use at short distances,” Lord Circumference was saying. “I was always a slow starter, but I was once eighteenth in the Crick at Rugby. We didn’t take sports so seriously at the ‘Varsity when I was up; everybody rode. What college were you at?”
“Scone.”
“Scone, were you? Ever come across a young nephew of my wife’s called Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington?”

Waugh

Evelyn Waugh (28 oktober 1903 – 10 april 1966)

 

 

De Vlaamse schrijver JMH Berckmans (Jean-Marie Henri) werd geboren in Leopoldsburg op 28 oktober 1953. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

Uit: Uit ogen die huilen van misprijzen

“Zo komt het dat ze weer allemaal samen voor de zoveelste keer aan de kersttafel zitten in de living van de benedenverdieping van het huis aan het nummer 21 in de Valaarstraat in Wilrijk. Bij Greta en Jean. Zoals elk jaar op kerstavond. Elk jaar op kerstavond nodigen Greta en Jean de hele familie uit.
De vader en de moeder, Gust en Marie-Louise.
De gaskamerman en de gaskamervrouw. De gaskamerman z’n haar hangt in lange vuile vieze klitten tot in z’n nek te hangen en de gulp van zijn jeans staat wagewijd open. Hij heeft niet eens de moeite genomen om in bad te gaan. De gaskamervrouw heeft haar nieuwe bloemenjurk aangetrokken. Ze denkt: Als de gaskamerman nu maar niet begint te zuipen.
En Inge. Voor de eerste keer zonder Peter. Peter heeft ze dit jaar eindelijk aan de deur gezet. ’t Is te zeggen: Inge is alleen gaan wonen. Op een klein appartement in de Coebergerstraat. Niks bijzonders maar goed genoeg. Klein maar proper. In maart komt de zaak nog één keer voor en dan is ze uit de echt gescheiden, zoals haar advokaat dat noemt. Definitief van die zak verlost. Tom en Bartje heeft ze meegenomen. En de auto ook, de Carina II. Die heeft ze nodig om naar haar werk te rijden. Ze is pas van werk veranderd. Ze werkt nu bij de Russen op het Falconplein en ze verdient er tienduizend frank meer dan bij De Rijck. Tien zakken, zegt ze.
En Guido en Cathy zijn er dit jaar ook bij. Guido voor de eerste keer. Niet dat Cathy aan die Guido een zaak gedaan heeft. Dat vindt iedereen, behalve Cathy. Geen schop onder z’n kont is die Guido waard. Dat vindt alleman, behalve Guido. Die vindt zichzelf een hele Piet. Piet Snot, denkt de gaskamerman. In Den Blokker op het Rooseveltplein staat die Guido achter de tapkast. Dat drugkot. Z’n zevenentwintigste baantje of daaromtrent. In een jaar. En als hij niet uitkijkt en voortmaakt sodemieteren ze ‘r ‘em daar ook binnen de kortste keren weer uit.
En de kinderen zijn er natuurlijk ook weer bij, die zitten aan de keukentafel die Jean bij de uitgetrokken eetkamertafel geschoven heeft: Isabelle en Stefan en Frédéric en Tom en Bartje, het kleine grut.
En tenslotte de honden, Carmen en José van Greta en Jean, de bobtail en de Mechelaar, en de kleine Prins, die de moeder van thuis heeft meegebracht omdat ze hem niet alleen wil laten op Kerstavond en die op de schoot van de moeder zit en haar gezicht schoonlikt.
Ze zijn er allemaal. Allemaal in die living van vijf bij zes waarin verder nog een wandkast, een tweede wandkast, een hele salon, een theetafeltje en een
uit z’n voegen gebarsten kerstboom vol glimmende bollen en flikkerende lampionnetjes. Want zonder kerstboom geen Kerstmis.”

Berckmans

JMH Berckmans (28 oktober 1953 – 31 augustus 2008)

 

De Duitse schrijver Uwe Tellkamp werd geboren op 28 oktober 1968 in Dresden.Zie ook mijn blog van 14 oktober 2008 en ook ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

 

Uit: Der Turm

„Die elektrischen Zitronen aus dem VEB »Narva«, mit denen der Baum dekoriert war, hatten einen Defekt, flackerten ackerten hin und wieder auf und löschten die elbabwärts liegende Silhouette Dres­dens. Christian zog die feucht gewordenen, an den wollenen In­nenseiten mit Eiskügelchen bedeckten Fäustlinge aus und rieb die vor Kälte fast taub gewordenen Finger rasch gegeneinander, hauchte sie an – der Atem verging als Nebelstreif vor dem finster liegenden, in den Fels gehauenen Eingang des Buchensteigs, der hinauf zu Arbogasts Instituten führte. Die Häuser der Schiller­straße verloren sich im Dunkel; vom nächstgelegenen, einem Fachwerkhaus mit verriegelten Fensterläden, lief eine Stromlei­tung ins Geäst einer der Buchen über dem Felsdurchgang, ein Ad­ventsstern brannte dort, hell und reglos. Christian, der über das Blaue Wunder und den Körnerplatz gekommen war, ging weiter stadtauswärts, in Richtung Grundstraße, und erreichte bald die Standseilbahn. Vor den Schaufenstern der Geschäfte, an denen er vorüberging – ein Bäcker, Molkereiwaren, ein Fischladen –, waren die Rolläden herabgelassen; düster und mit aschigen Kon­turen, halb schon in Schatten, lagen die Häuser. Es schien ihm, als ob sie sich aneinanderdrängten, Schutz beieinander suchten vor etwas Unbestimmtem, noch nicht Ergründbarem, das vielleicht aufgleiten würde aus der Dunkelheit – wie der Eismond aufge­glitten war über der Elbe vorhin, als Christian auf der menschen­leeren Brücke stehengeblieben war und auf den Fluß geblickt hatte, den dicken, von seiner Mutter gestrickten Wollschal über Ohren und Wangen gezogen gegen den frostscharfen Wind. Der Mond war langsam gestiegen und hatte sich von der kaltträgen, wie flüssige Erde wirkenden Masse des Stroms gelöst, um allein über den Wiesen mit ihren in Nebelgespinste gehüllten Weiden, dem Bootshaus auf der Altstädter Elbseite zu stehen, den gegen Pillnitz zu sich verlierenden Höhenzügen. Von einem Kirchturm in der Ferne schlug es vier, was Christian wunderte.

Er ging den Weg zur Standseilbahn hinauf, stellte seine Reise­tasche auf die verwitterte Bank vor dem Gatter, das den Bahn­steig abschloß, und wartete, die Hände samt Handschuhen in die Taschen seiner militärgrünen Parka gesteckt. Die Zeiger der Bahnhofsuhr über dem Schaffnerhäuschen schienen sehr lang­sam vorzurücken. Außer ihm wartete niemand auf die Stand­seilbahn, und um sich die Zeit zu vertreiben, musterte er die Anzeigentafeln. Lange waren sie nicht mehr gesäubert worden. Eine warb für das Café Toscana auf der Altstädter Elbseite, eine für das weiter in Richtung Schillerplatz liegende Geschäft Näh­ter, eine andere für das Restaurant Sibyllenhof an der Bergstati­on.“

Tellkamp

Uwe Tellkamp (Dresden, 28 oktober 1968)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter en criticus John Hollander werd geboren op 28 oktober 1929 in New York.  Sinds 2007 is hij emeritis hoogleraar voor Engels van Yale University. Hij doceerde ook aan het Connecticut College, het Hunter College, en het Graduate Center, CUNY. Hollander’s eerste dichtbundel  A Crackling of Thorns, trok de aandacht van W. H. Auden, die het uitkoos voor publicatie in de Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1958

 

The Night Mirror

 

What it showed was always the same—

A vertical panel with him in it,

Being a horrible bit of movement

At the edge of knowledge, overhanging

The canyons of nightmare. And when the last

Glimpse was enough—his grandmother,

Say, with a blood-red face, rising

From her Windsor chair in the warm lamplight

To tell him something—he would scramble up,

Waiting to hear himself shrieking, and gain

The ledge of the world, his bed, lit by

The pale rectangle of window, eclipsed

By a dark shape, but a shape that moved

And saw and knew and mistook its reflection

In the tall panel on the closet door

For itself. The silver corona of moonlight

That gloried his glimpsed head was enough

To send him back into silences (choosing

Fear in those chasms below), to reject

Freedom of wakeful seeing, believing

And feeling, for peace and the bondage of horrors

Welling up only from deep within

That dark planet head, spinning beyond

The rim of the night mirror’s range, huge

And cold, on the pillow’s dark side.

 

 

 

An Old-Fashioned Song

 

No more walks in the wood:

The trees have all been cut

Down, and where once they stood

Not even a wagon rut

Appears along the path

Low brush is taking over.

 

No more walks in the wood;

This is the aftermath

Of afternoons in the clover

Fields where we once made love

Then wandered home together

Where the trees arched above,

Where we made our own weather

When branches were the sky.

Now they are gone for good,

And you, for ill, and I

Am only a passer-by.

 

We and the trees and the way

Back from the fields of play

Lasted as long as we could.

No more walks in the wood.

 

Hollander

John Hollander (New York,  28 oktober 1929)

 

De Duitse dichter, schrijver en theoloog Johannes Daniel Falk werd geboren op 28 oktober 1768 in Danzig. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

 

 

Das Lebenseinmaleins

 

nach einer bekannten Melodie

 

Mit EINS da fängt das Leben an;

Mit ZWEY da wird man Frau und Mann;

Und kommen wir erst zu den DREYN:

Da fangen Kinder an zu schrey’n.

Wo DREY sind, folgt alsbald die VIER;

Stets enger wird nun das Quartier;

Bey FÜNF und SECHS giebt’s größre Noth:

Denn immer kleiner wird das Brod.

Wohl Mancher rief bey SIEBEN schon:

O weh mir armen Korydon!

So wächst die Zahl von Jahr zu Jahr,

Bis grau vor Alter wird das Haar.

Sie wandern ein – wir wandern aus,

Heut Eins, und Morgen wieder Eins:

Das ist das Lebenseinmaleins!

 

Falk

Johannes Daniel Falk (28 oktober 1768 – 14 februari 1826)

 

De Duitse dichter en schrijver Karl Philipp Conz werd geboren op 28 oktober 1762 in Lorch. Zie ook mijn blog van 28 oktober 2008.

 

Die Finnenhochzeit

 

In König Sumblus Hallen erhub sich Freudenspiel,

es saßen da der Recken und edlen Degen viel,

der König in der Krone mit Edelstein geschmückt;

bei ihm die schöne Tochter in Brautschmuck man erblickt.

 

Zur Hand der Vogt von Sachsen als Bräutigam ihr saß.

Ei, was da nicht von Freuden und Lust ein Übermaß!

Es strömt in goldnen Schalen der purpurrote Wein, –

all Sorg und trübe Schwere, sie müssen vergessen sein.

 

Da tritt herein ein Harfner, gar wunderseltsam gestaltet,

vermummt, mit grauendem Barte und Rock und Mantel veraltet:

“Willkommen zu hohen Freuden, willkommen schöne Maid!

Willkommen, Herr König in Trauer! Willkomm, Herr Bräut’gam zu Leid!”

 

“Was, Leid im Freudensaale? Du wunderlicher Gast!

setz dich, und wen du getrunken und satt gegessen dich hast,

so freu dich mit den Freudigen und nimm das Wort zurück!

Wo nicht, so eile, du Schlimmer, von hinnen im Augenblick!”

 

So Sumblus zu dem Gaste. Gar seltsam tritt’s ihn an.

der Gast: “Was ihr euch freuet, ist nur alles ein Wahn;

was oft mir Freude begonnen, ist bald in Leid zerstoben.

Man soll, hört ich oft sagen, den Tag vorm Abend nicht loben!”

 

“Wie, bist du krank an Sinnen, und doch ein Harfner gut?

Wie, bannt dir nicht die Harfe der Sorge schweren Mut?

Auf, greife zu den Saiten! laß frisch ein Lied uns hören!

ein neues Lied, ein munteres Lied! so wollen wir baß dich ehren!”

 

Rasch schlug er in die Saiten, er sang von einer Braut,

die einem edlen König ein König hätt’ getraut

und hätt’ sie ihm gesichert fest in die rechte Hand

und dann in falschen Treuen den Sinn schnell abgewandt.

 

“O wer auf Weibertreue und Männerschwüre baut,

dem Sande und dem Wasser der seinen Fuß vertraut!

Ich mochte nimmer zagen mit flammenheißem Mut

vor Lanzen und vor Pfeilen, vor Schwertern rot von Blut.

 

Acht übermute Recken warf hin mein Schwert zumal,

neun streckte meine Lanze voll wilden Grimms zu Tal:

und soll jetzt so gehöhnet vor Braut und Rittern steht

und einem fremden Bräutigam vermählt die meine sehn?

 

O du viel falscher Vater, o du viel falsche Braut!

O du viel falscher Bräutigam!” so schrie er wild und laut.

Den König kam ein Zagen, die Braut ein Zittern an,

als mit gezücktem Schwerte mit eins den Harfner sie sahn.

 

Weg warf er Bart und Larve, enthüllte sein Gesicht:

Gorm war’s, der alte König, entflammt von Zornes Licht;

und alle die Recken im Saale, die fuhren erschrocken auf,

als auf den Vogt von Sachsen er fuhr in grimmigem Lauf.

 

Und eh sie sich mochten besinnen, lag Heinz schon tot im Blut.

“Da liegst nun, Ungesunder, und feire die Hochzeit gut!”

Und rasch die Braut aus dem Saale er aufhub löwenstark

und fort vom Finnenfeste sie führte nach Dänemark.

 

Conz

Karl Philipp Conz (28 oktober 1762 – 20 juni 1827)