Tag: Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder, Fannie Flag, H.G. Wells, Johann Peter Eckermann

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijverLeonard Cohen werd geboren op 21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leonard Cohen op dit blog..

 

I Have Not Lingered In European Monosteries

I Have Not Lingered In European Monosteries
and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights
who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;
I have not parted the grasses
or purposefully left them thatched.

I have not held my breath
so that I might hear the breathing of God
or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise,
or starved for visions.
Although I have watched him often
I have not become the heron,
leaving my body on the shore,
and I have not become the luminous trout,
leaving my body in the air.

I have not worshipped wounds and relics,
or combs of iron,
or bodies wrapped and burnt in scrolls.

I have not been unhappy for ten thousands years.
During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.

 

The only tourist in Havana turns his thoughts homeward

let us govern Canada,
let us find our serious heads,
let us dump asbestos on the White House,
let us make the French talk English,

not only here but everywhere,
let us torture the Senate individually

until they confess,
let us purge the New Party,
let us encourage the dark races

so they’ll be lenient

when they take over,
let us make the CBC talk English,
let us all lean in one direction

and float down

to the coast of Florida,
let us have tourism,
let us flirt with the enemy,
let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards,
let us sell snow

to under-developed nations,
(It is true one of our national leaders
was a Roman Catholic?)
let us terrorize Alaska,
let us unite

Church and State,
let us not take it lying down,
let us have two Governor Generals

at the same time,
let us have another official language,
let us determine what it will be,
let us give a Canada Council Fellowship

to the most original suggestion,
let us teach sex in the home

to parents,
let us threaten to join the U.S.A.

and pull out at the last moment,
my brothers, come,
our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere

like Gladstone bags abandoned

after a coup d’état,
let us put them on very quickly,
let us maintain a stony silence

on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

 


Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

Lees verder “Leonard Cohen, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder, Fannie Flag, H.G. Wells, Johann Peter Eckermann” →

Leonard Cohen, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder, Fannie Flag, H.G. Wells, Johann Peter Eckermann

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijverLeonard Cohen werd geboren op 21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leonard Cohen op dit blog..

 

Dear Diary

“You are greater than the Bible
And the Conference of the Birds
And the Upanishads
All put together

“You are more severe
Than the Scriptures
And Hammurabi’s Code
More dangerous than Luther’s paper
Nailed to the Cathedral door

“You are sweeter
Than the Song of Songs
Mightier by far
Than the Epic of Gilgamesh
And braver
Than the Sagas of Iceland.

“I bow my head in gratitude
To the ones who give their lives
To keep the secret
The daily secret
Under lock and key

“Dear Diary
I mean no disrespect
But you are more sublime
Than any Sacred Text

“Sometimes just a list
Of my events
Is holier than the Bill of Rights
And more intense.”

 

I Wonder How Many People

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when i look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

In 1969

Lees verder “Leonard Cohen, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder, Fannie Flag, H.G. Wells, Johann Peter Eckermann” →

Leonard Cohen, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder, Fannie Flag, H.G. Wells, Johann Peter Eckermann

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op  21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009.

Uit: The favorite game

“For all the bodies in and out of bathing suits, clothes, water, going between rooms, lying on grass, taking the print of grass, dancing discipline, leaping over horses, growing in mirrors, felt like treasure, slobbered over, cheated for, all of them, the great ballet line, the cream in them, the sun on them, the oil anointed.
A thousand shadows, a single fire, everything that happened, twisted by telling, served the vision, and when he saw it, he was in the very center of things.
Blindly he climbed the wooden steps that led up the side of the mountain. He was stopped by the high walls of the hospital. Its Italian towers looked sinister. His mother was sleeping in one of them.
He turned and looked at the city below him.
The heart of the city wasn’t down there among the new buildings and widened streets. It was right over there at the Allan, which, with drugs and electricity, was keeping the businessmen sane and their wives from suicide and their children free from hatred. The hospital was the true heart, pumping stability and erections and orgasms and sleep into all the withering commercial limbs. His mother was sleeping in one of the towers. With windows that didn’t quite open.
The restaurant bathed the corner of Stanley and St. Catherine in a light that made your skin yellow and the veins show through. It was a big place, mirrored, crowded as usual. There wasn’t a woman he could see. Breavman noted that a lot of the men used hair tonic; the sides of their heads seemed shiny and wet. Most of them were thin. And there seemed to be a uniform, almost. Tight chinos with belts in the back, V-neck sweaters without shirts.
He sat at a table. He was very thirsty. He felt in his pocket. Shell was right. He didn’t have much money.
No, he wouldn’t go to New York. He knew that. But he must always be connected to her. That must never be severed. Everything was simple as long as he was connected to her, as long as they remembered.
One day what he did to her, to the child, would enter his understanding with such a smash of guilt that he would sit motionless for days, until others carried him and medical machines brought him back to speech.
But that was not today.”

cohen

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009.

Uit: It

„The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the intersection of Witcham and Jackson. The three vertical lenses on all sides of the traffic light were dark this afternoon in the fall of 1957, and the houses were all dark, too. There had been steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of Derry had lost their power then, and it was not back on yet.

A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of the boy’s slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof … a comfortable, almost cozy sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was George Denbrough. He was six. His brother William, known to most of the kids at Derry Elementary School (and even to the teachers, who would never have used the nickname to his face) as Stuttering Bill, was at home, hacking out the last of a nasty case of influenza. In that autumn of 1957, eight months before the real horrors began, and twenty-eight years before the final showdown, Stuttering Bill was ten years old.

Bill had made the boat beside which George now ran. He had made it sitting up in bed, his back propped against a pile of pillows, while their mother played Fur Elise on the piano in the parlor and rain swept restlessly against his bedroom window.“

king

Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)

 

De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009.

Uit: Nouvelles sous ecstasy

„“L’hymne des plages, selon moi, n’est pas Sea, Sex and Sun de Serge Gainsbourg mais plutôt J’aime regarder les filles de Patrick Coutin. C’est une chanson magnifique : “J’aime regarder les filles qui marchent sur la plage / Quand elles se déshabillent et font semblant d’être sages.” Chaque fois que je m’allonge sur du sable, j’entends cette ode à la frustration sexuelle, cette apologie du voyeurisme balnéaire. Je pense à ces milliers d’après-midi écrasants, passés à observer les demoiselles dorées, en monokini, à Bidart, Biarritz ou St Tropez, sans jamais oser les aborder. Je suis convaincu que ces inombrables heures de contemplation timide ont fait de moi l’ignoble obsédé sexuel que je suis devenu.

Leur poitrine gonflée par le désir de vivre / Leurs yeux qui se demandent : mais quel est ce garçon ? Il y a un crescendo violent dans la chanson de Coutin qui traduit bien l’impuissance exaspérée du vacancier hétérosexuel, anéanti par la chaleur, cerné par une atroce beauté incontrôlée. Les filles gambadent, soulèvent le sable brûlant, crient des prénoms de garçons plus bronzés que lui. Elles sortent de l’eau les tétons mauves ; les poils taillés de leur sexe se collent contre le slip de bain. Elles embrassent des surfeurs australiens, ou des disc-jokeys camarguais.
Elles ignorent les garçons malingres et verdâtres qui lisent des livres, la bite enfoncée dans leur serviette éponge. (…) Pourquoi laisse-t-on les filles de seize ans se balader en liberté sur les bords de mer ?”

beigbeder

Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flagg (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009.

Uit: Standing in the Rainbow

‚Almost everyone in town that had an extra room took in a boarder. There were no apartment buildings or hotels as of yet. The Howard Johnson was built a few years later but in the meantime bachelors needed to be looked after and single women certainly had to have a respectable place to live. Most people considered it their Christian duty to take them in whether they needed the few extra dollars a week or not, and some of the boarders stayed on for years. Mr. Pruiet, a bachelor from Kentucky with long thin feet, boarded with the Haygoods so long that they eventually forgot he was not family. Whenever they moved, he moved. When he finally did die at seventy-eight, he was buried in the Haygood family plot with a headstone that read:

 Mr. PRUIET

STILL WITH US

PAID IN FULL

The homes on First Avenue North were located within walking distance of town and school and were where most of the town’s boarders lived.

At present the Smith family’s boarder is Jimmy Head, the short-order cook at the Trolley Car Diner; the Robinsons next door have Beatrice Woods, the Little Blind Songbird; the Whatleys up the street have Miss Tuttle, the high school English teacher. Ernest Koonitz, the school’s band director and tuba soloist, boards with Miss Alma, who, as luck would have it, has a hearing problem. But soon the Smith family will take in a new boarder who will set in action a chain of events that should eventually wind up in the pages of history books. Of course they won’t know it at the time, especially their ten-year-old son, Bobby. He is at the moment downtown standing outside the barbershop with his friend Monroe Newberry, staring at the revolving red and white stripes on the electric barber’s pole“

.flagg

Fannie Flag (Birmingham, 21 september 1944)
DVD Cover

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009.

Uit: The War of the Worlds

„The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.
Yet so vain is man and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer up to the very end of the nineteenth century expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that Mars is not only more distant from life’s beginning but also nearer its end.
The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and with intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope—our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and gray with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through drifting cloud-wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy-crowded seas.“

 wells

H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)

 

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008. en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2009.

Weimar

Glücklich Weimar! – Von den Städten allen
Bist du, kleine, wunderbar bedacht;
Man wird stets zu deinen Toren wallen,
Angezogen von der heil’gen Macht;
Und man wird nach großen Männern fragen,
Die in schönen Zeiten hier gestrebt,
Und mit edlem Neid wird man beklagen,
Dass man mit den Edlen nicht gelebt.

 

Musengunst

Musst kein Gedicht durch tiefes Sinnen
Dem Geiste mühsam abgewinnen:

Dem Dichter muss zumute sein,
Als flög’ eine Taube zum Fenster herein
Gebraten, wo er nichts braucht dazu,
Als sie zu schmausen in guter Ruh.

Wer so das edle Dichten treibt,
Der stets ein lust’ger Geselle bleibt;
Wer’s aber auf solche Weise nicht kann,
Tut besser, er fängt was anders an.

eckermann.jpg

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 – 3 december 1854)
Getekend door Ernst Förster, 1825

75 Jaar Leonard Cohen, H.G. Wells, Johann Peter Eckermann, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder, Xavier Roelens, Fannie Flag

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op  21 september 1934 te Montréal.

 

Waiting for Marianne

 

I have lost a telephone

with your smell in it

 

I am living beside the radio

all the stations at once

but I pick out a Polish lullaby

I pick it out of the static

it fades I wait I keep the beat

it comes back almost asleep

 

Did you take the telephone

knowing I’d sniff it immoderately

maybe heat up the plastic

to get all the crumbs of your breath

 

and if you won’t come back

how will you phone to say

you won’t come back

so that I could at least argue.

 

 

Poem

 

I heard of a man

who says words so beautifully

that if he only speaks their name

women give themselves to him.

 

If I am dumb beside your body

while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips.

it is because I hear a
man climb stairs and clear his throat outside the door.

 

 

 

The Pro

 

from the Nashville Notebooks of 1969:

 

I leave my silence to a co-operative of poets
who have already bruised their mouths against it.

 

I leave my homesick charm to the scavengers of
spare change who work the old artistic corners.

 

I leave the shadow of my manly groin to those who
write for pay.

 

I leave to several jealous men a second-rate legend
of my life.

 

To those few high school girls
who preferred my work to Dylan’s

 

I leave my stone ear
and my disposable Franciscan ambitions.

 

 

Cohen

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent.

 

Uit: The Time Machine

 

“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch — into futurity.

“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then, though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity, the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set. It simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done.“

 

hg_wells

H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)

 

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 

 

Höchste Süße

 

Hochgepriesen ist des Honigs Süße,

Köstlich labt der vollen Kirsche Saft;

Traubenkühlung, wenn ich dich genieße,

Füllt sich Geist und Herz mit neuer Kraft.

Wer von Lebensängsten will gesunden,

Spüle sie hinweg mit kühlem Wein!

Bessre Labe will noch erst erfunden,

Süßere noch erst ersonnen sein.

 

Aber süßre Labe wird erfunden,

Als dir Honig, Kirsch’ und Traube nennt,

Wenn die Vielgeliebte du umwunden

Und ihr holder Mund an deinem brennt.

O des überseligen Genusses,

Der sich da von Seel’ in Seele gießt!

O du Wundersüß des ersten Kusses,

Wenn der Liebe heil’ger Bund sich schließt!

 

 

Getadelte Poeten

 

Gras, am Wege getreten,

Wird sich gleich wieder richten.

Getadelte Poeten –

Sie werden immer dichten.

 

eckermann_relief

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 – 3 december 1854)

 

Zie voor bovenstaande drie schrijvers ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008.

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008.

 

Uit: Cell

 

„The event that came to be known as The Pulse began at 3:03 p.m., eastern standard time, on the afternoon of October 1. The term was a misnomer, of course, but within ten hours of the event, most of the scientists capable of pointing this out were either dead or insane. The name hardly mattered, in any case. What mattered was the effect.

At three o’clock on that day, a young man of no particular importance to history came walking — almost bouncing — east along Boylston Street in Boston. His name was Clayton Riddell. There was an expression of undoubted contentment on his face to go along with the spring in his step. From his left hand there swung the handles of an artist’s portfolio, the kind that closes and latches to make a traveling case. Twined around the fingers of his right hand was the drawstring of a brown plastic shopping bag with the words small treasures printed on it for anyone who cared to read them.

Inside the bag, swinging back and forth, was a small round object. A present, you might have guessed, and you would have been right. You might further have guessed that this Clayton Riddell was a young man seeking to commemorate some small (or perhaps even not so small) victory with a small treasure, and you would have been right again. The item inside the bag was a rather expensive glass paperweight with a gray haze of dandelion fluff caught in its center. He had bought it on his walk back from the Copley Square Hotel to the much humbler Atlantic Avenue Inn where he was staying, frightened by the ninety-dollar pricetag on the paperweight’s base, somehow even more frightened by the realization that he could now afford such a thing.

Handing his credit card over to the clerk had taken almost physical courage. He doubted if he could have done it if the paperweight had been for himself; he would have muttered something about having changed his mind and scuttled out of the shop. But it was for Sharon. Sharon liked such things, and she still liked him — I’m pulling for you, baby, she’d said the day before he left for Boston. Considering the s— they’d put each other through over the last year, that had touched him. Now he wanted to touch her, if that was still possible. The paperweight was a small thing (a small treasure), but he was sure she’d love that delicate gray haze deep down in the middle of the glass, like a pocket fog“.

 

stephen-king

Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)

 

De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008.

 

Uit: Un roman français

 

“Je ne me souviens pas de mon enfance. Quand je le dis, personne ne me croit. Tout le monde se souvient de son passé; à quoi bon vivre si la vie est oubliée? En moi rien ne reste de moi-même; de zéro à quinze ans je suis face à un trou noir (au sens astrophysique: «Objet massif dont le champ gravitationnel est si intense qu’il empêche toute forme de matière ou de rayonnement de s’en échapper»). Longtemps j’ai cru que j’étais normal, que les autres étaient frappés de la même amnésie. Mais si je leur demandais: «Tu te souviens de ton enfance?», ils me racontaient quantité d’histoires. J’ai honte que ma biographie soit imprimée à l’encre sympathique. Pourquoi mon enfance n’est-elle pas indélébile? Je me sens exclu du monde, car le monde a une archéologie et moi pas. J’ai effacé mes traces comme un criminel en cavale. Quand j’évoque cette infirmité, mes parents lèvent les yeux au ciel, ma famille proteste, mes amis d’enfance se vexent, d’anciennes fiancées sont tentées de produire des documents photographiques.

Je ne mens pas par omission: je fouille dans ma vie comme dans une malle vide, sans y rien trouver; je suis désert. Parfois j’entends murmurer dans mon dos: «Celui-là, je n’arrive pas à le cerner.» J’acquiesce. Comment voulezvous situer quelqu’un qui ignore d’où il vient? Comme dit Gide dans Les Faux-Monnayeurs, je suis «bâti sur pilotis: ni fondation, ni soussol». La terre se dérobe sous mes pieds, je lévite sur coussin d’air, je suis une bouteille qui flotte sur la mer, un mobile de Calder. Pour plaire, j’ai renoncé à avoir une colonne vertébrale, j’ai voulu me fondre dans le décor tel Zelig, l’homme-caméléon. Oublier sa personnalité, perdre la mémoire pour être aimé: devenir, pour séduire, celui que les autres choisissent. Ce désordre de la personnalité, en langage psychiatrique, est nommé «déficit de conscience centrée».

 

FredericBeigbeder

Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)

 

 

De Vlaamse dichter Xavier Roelens werd op 21 september 1976 in Rekkem (Menen). Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

 

een autochtone trein naar A


de ogen van een andere man zijn bijna dicht
er zit een weerlicht op zijn wenkbrauw
en rookt een zelfgedraaide sigaret.
een andere man scheurt bladen uit de bijbel, leest
een kopie van een kopie met een eenbenige bril
zijn hoofd is bijna kaal hij kijkt geen moment
naar medemensen.
een andere man roept minuten af.

een andere vrouw is de andere vrouw
en is voor haar de kous af.
een andere man schijt en plast
is daartussen één geworden.

 

Xavier Roelens

Xavier Roelens (Rekkem, 21 september 1976)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flagg (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zij schreef talrijke boeken, waarvan het bekendste Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is, dat in 1991 verfilmd werd met o.a. Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates en Mary-Louise Parker.Als actrice trad zij op in enkele films en spelshows.

 

Uit: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

 

Cafe Opens

 

The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since. Idgie says that for people who know her not to worry about getting poisoned, she is not cooking. All the cooking is being done by two colored women, Sipsey and Onzell, and the barbecue is being cooked by Big George, who is Onzell’s husband.

If there is anybody that has not been there yet, Idgie says that the breakfast hours are from 5:30-7:30, and you can get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and red-eye gravy, and coffee for 25 [cts.].

For lunch and supper you can have: fried chicken; pork chops and gravy; catfish; chicken and dumplings; or a barbecue plate; and your choice of three vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink and dessert–for 35 [cts.].

She said the vegetables are: creamed corn; fried green tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyed peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.

And pie for dessert.

My other half, Wilbur, and I ate there the other night, and it was so good he says he might not ever eat at home again. Ha. Ha. I wish this were true. I spend all my time cooking for the big lug, and still can’t keep him filled up.

By the way, Idgie says that one of her hens laid an egg with a ten-dollar bill in it.

… Dot Weems …

 

FannieFlagg

Fannie Flag (Birmingham, 21 september 1944)

Leonard Cohen, Johann Peter Eckermann, H.G. Wells, Stephen King, Frédéric Beigbeder

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op  21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007.

Do not forget old friends

 

Do not forget old friends
you knew long before I met you
the times I know nothing about
being someone
who lives by himself
and only visits you on a raid

 

 

When this American woman

 

When this American woman,
whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth,
comes thundering past my sitting place
like a forest-burning Mongol tribe,
the city is ravished
and brittle buildings of a hundred years
splash into the street;
and my eyes are burnt
for the embroidered Chinese girls,
already old,
and so small between the thin pines
on these enormous landscapes,
that if you turn your head
they are lost for hours.

 

 

I perceived the outline of your breasts

I perceived the outline of your breasts
through your Hallowe’en costume
I knew you were falling in love with me
because no other man could perceive
the advance of your bosom into his imagination
It was a rupture of your unusual modesty
for me and me alone
through which you impressed upon my shapeless hunger
the incomparable and final outline of your breasts
like two deep fossil shells
which remained all night long and probably forever

 

cohen

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van J
ohann Wolfgang von Goethe. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007.

 

 

Tisch-Lied
Zur Feier des 28. August 1826.
(Goethes Geburtstag.)

 

Wenn den Meister hoch zu feiern
Heute schon manch Lied erklang,
Und von vielgeübten Leyern
Tönte lieblicher Gesang;
Will auch ich mein Liedchen bringen,
Gleicher Kräfte mir bewusst;

Lebe hoch vor allen Dingen
Süßer Wonnemond August!

Dichter, die vor uns gekommen,
Nannten Wonnemond den Mai;
Bleib’ es ihnen unbenommen,
Aber wir sind nicht dabei;
Denn wir wissen, was wir sagen,
Schön’rer Dinge uns bewusst:

Darum hoch vor allen Tagen,
Achtundzwanzigster August!

Ach, was wäre doch das Leben,
Säßen da wir ohne Wein!
Drum wer uns den Saft der Reben
Gibt, er soll gepriesen sein.
Und so lasset denn erschallen
Gläserklang zu heitrer Lust,
Und so lebe hoch vor allen

Süßer Traubenmond August!

Doch was hätten wir vom Weine,
Säßen da wir still und stumm!
Darum abermals das eine
Wend ich wiederum herum:
Und so sag’ ich, dass die Lieder
Zu dem Wein die höchste Lust;
Und so sag’ ich, lebe wieder
Achtundzwanzigster August!

 

Schöner Tag, der uns den Meister
Deutscher Lieder hold gesandt;
Der den edelsten der Geister
Deutschem Boden treu verband.
Du vor allen andern Festen
Jedes Guten höchste Lust!
Immer hoch von allen Besten
Achtundzwanzigster August!

 

eckermann

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 – 3 december 1854)

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007.

 

Uit: God the Invisible King

 

“God comes we know not whence, into the conflict of life. He works in men and through men. He is a spirit, a single spirit and a single person; he has begun and he will never end. He is the immortal part and leader of mankind. He has motives, he has characteristics, he has an aim. He is by our poor scales of measurement boundless love, boundless courage, boundless generosity. He is thought and a steadfast will. He is our friend and brother and the light of the world. That briefly is the belief of the modern mind with regard to God. There is no very novel idea about this God, unless it be the idea that he had a beginning. This is the God that men have sought and found in all ages, as God or as the Messiah or the Saviour. The finding of him is salvation from the purposelessness of life. The new religion has but disentangled the idea of him from the absolutes and infinities and mysteries of the Christian theologians; from mythological virgin births and the cosmogonies and intellectual pretentiousness of a vanished age.

 

Modern religion appeals to no revelation, no authoritative teaching, no mystery. The statement it makes is, it declares, a mere statement of what we may all perceive and experience. We all live in the storm of life, we all find our understandings limited by the Veiled Being; if we seek salvation and search within for God, presently we find him. All this is in the nature of things. If every one who perceives and states it were to be instantly killed and blotted out, presently other people would find their way to the same conclusions; and so on again and again. To this all true religion, casting aside its hulls of misconception, must ultimately come. To it indeed much religion is already coming. Christian thought struggles towards it, with the millstones of Syrian theology and an outrageous mythology of incarnation and resurrection about its neck. When at last our present bench of bishops join the early fathers of the church in heaven there will be, I fear, a note of reproach in their greeting of the ingenious person who saddled them with OMNIPOTENS. Still more disastrous for them has been the virgin birth, with the terrible fascination of its detail for unpoetic minds. How rich is the literature of authoritative Christianity with decisions upon the continuing virginity of Mary and the virginity of Joseph–ideas that first arose in Arabia as a Moslem gloss upon Christianity–and how little have these peepings and pryings to do with the needs of the heart and the finding of God!

 

Within the last few years there have been a score or so of such volumes as that recently compiled by Dr. Foakes Jackson, entitled “The Faith and the War,” a volume in which the curious reader may contemplate deans and canons, divines and church dignitaries, men intelligent and enquiring and religiously disposed, all lying like overladen camels, panting under this load of obsolete theological responsibility, groaning great articles, outside the needle`s eye that leads to God.”

 

HG_WELLS

H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)
Portret door Alan Phillips

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. King begon al vroeg met schrijven. Rond zijn 13e jaar vond hij een doos met oude boeken van zijn vader in het huis van zijn tante, meest horror en sciencefiction. Hij was direct verslingerd aan deze genres.Van 1966 tot 1970 studeerde King Engels aan de universiteit van Maine. Daar schreef hij een column in de schoolkrant getiteld King’s Garbage Truck. Op de universiteit ontmoette hij ook Tabitha Spruce, met wie hij in 1971 trouwde. King werkte in allerlei baantjes om zijn studie te kunnen betalen.

Na zijn universitaire studies te hebben afgesloten met de titel Bachelor of Science in English en het certificaat om op middelbare scholen les te mogen geven, nam hij een baan als leraar Engels op een school in Hampden (Main). Gedurende deze tijd woonden hij en zijn gezin in een camper. Het was soms moeilijk de eindjes aan elkaar te knopen, en het geld dat verdiend werd met korte verhalen die gepubliceerd werden in tijdschriften voor mannen kwam zeer van pas. King kreeg ook een drankprobleem, iets waar hij meer dan 10 jaar mee heeft geworsteld.

Tijdens deze periode begon King met een aantal verhalen. Een daarvan ging over een jong meisje met bovennatuurlijke krachten. Omdat het verhaal hem frustreerde, gooide King het weg. Later kwam hij er achter dat Tabitha het verhaal had gevonden en uit de vuilnisbak had gehaald, ze haalde hem over om het af te maken onder de naam Carrie. Hij stuurde het verhaal naar een vriend bij een uitgeverij en vergat het toen min of meer. Enige tijd later ontving hij een aanbod met een voorschot van $2500,00, wat zelfs in die tijd niet een bijzonder hoog bedrag was. Jaren later werden de paperback rechten verkocht voor $400.000,00.

 

Uit: Bag of Bones

 

“On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription — this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I’d finished my writing for the day and offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all of that. She blew a kiss at me off the palm of her hand and went out. The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That’s how you identify the dead here in Derry — no walking down a subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an office marked PRIVATE and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope.

The Rite Aid and the Shopwell are less than a mile from our house, in a little neighborhood strip mall which also supports a video store, a used-book store named Spread It Around (they do a very brisk business in my old paperbacks), a Radio Shack, and a Fast Foto. It’s on Up-Mile Hill, at the intersection of Witcham and Jackson.

 

She parked in front of Blockbuster Video, went into the drugstore, and did business with Mr. Joe Wyzer, who was the druggist in those days; he has since moved on to the Rite Aid in Bangor. At the checkout she picked up one of those little chocolates with marshmallow inside, this one in the shape of a mouse. I found it later, in her purse. I unwrapped it and ate it myself, sitting at the kitchen table with the contents of her red handbag spread out in front of me, and it was like taking Communion. When it was gone except for the taste of chocolate on my tongue and in my throat, I burst into tears. I sat there in the litter of her Kleenex and makeup and keys and half-finished rolls of Certs and cried with my hands over my eyes, the way a kid cries.”

 

king

Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)

 

De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Hij studeerde politieke wetenschappen en werkte tien jaar lang als tekstschrijver in een reclamebureau. Tegenwoordig woont en werkt hij als zelfstandig schrijver in Parijs. Met de publicatie van zijn roman 99 francs werd hij buiten de grenzen van Frankrijk bekend.

 

Uit: Au secours pardon

 

“C’est l’année de mes quarante ans que je suis devenu complètement fou. Auparavant, comme tout le monde, je faisais semblant d’être normal. La vraie folie surgit quand cesse la comédie sociale. C’était après mon deuxième divorce. Il me restait un peu d’argent ; j’avais quitté mon pays. J’avais aimé, j’aimerais encore, mais j’espérais pouvoir me passer de l’amour, ce « sentiment ridicule accompagné de mouvements malpropres », comme dit Théophile Gautier. D’ailleurs j’avais arrêté toutes les drogues dures, je ne vois pas pourquoi l’amour aurait bénéficié d’une exception. Pour la première fois depuis ma naissance, je vivais seul, et j’entendais en profiter un instant. Je ressemblais peut-être à mon époque dénuée de structure. Je reconnais qu’il est fastidieux de vivre sans colonne vertébrale. J’ignore comment se débrouillent les autres invertébrés. J’avais grandi dans une famille décomposée, avant de décomposer la mienne. Je n’avais ni patrie, ni racines, ni attaches d’aucune sorte, à part une enfance oubliée, dont les photos sonnaient faux, et un ordinateur portable à connexion wifi qui me donnait l’illusion d’être relié au reste de l’univers. Je prenais l’amnésie pour le sommet de la liberté ; c’est une maladie assez répandue de nos jours.

Je voyageais sans bagages et louais des appartements meublés. Vous trouvez sinistre de vivre dans des meubles que l’on n’a pas choisis ? Je ne suis pas d’accord. Ce qui est glauque, c’est de passer des heures dans des magasins à hésiter entre différentes sortes de chaises. Je ne m’intéressais pas aux voitures non plus. Les hommes qui comparent leurs cylindrées me font pitié ; le temps qu’ils perdent à énumérer des marques est effrayant. Je lisais des livres de poche en soulignant certaines phrases au stylo à bille, avant de jeter les deux à la poubelle (le livre avec le stylo). J’essayais de ne rien conserver ailleurs que dans ma tête ; j’avais l’impression que les choses m’encombraient, mais je crois que les pensées aussi, qui prennent encore plus de place. Dans un garde-meuble de la banlieue parisienne, mes vieux postes de télévision étaient empilés dans des cartons, au fond d’un hangar en tôle ondulée. Sur mon agenda, je raturais les jours passés, comme un prisonnier grave les murs de sa cellule. Ne lisant plus les journaux français, j’apprenais les nouvelles avec des semaines de retard : « Ah bon ? Eddy Barclay est mort ? » Je passais des semaines sans sortir, seulement connecté au monde par des sites de pharmacie ou de spanking sur internet. Je n’ai rien mangé en 2005.”

 

beigbeder-galeries-lafayettes
Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)

Frédéric Beigbeder, Leonard Cohen, Johann Peter Eckermann, H. G. Wells

De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Hij studeerde politieke wetenschappen en werkte tien jaar lang als tekstschrijver voor een reclamebureau. Tegenwoordig woont en werkt hij als criticus en schrijver in Parijs. Met de publicatie van zijn roman 99 francs werd hij ook buiten de grenzen van Frankrijk bekend. Andere romans volgden. In mei 2007 was hij in de VS om een film te maken over de zeer teruggetrokkken levende schrijver J.D. Salinger. Ook 99 francs werd verfilmd.

 

Uit : 99 Francs

 

« Quand, à force d’économies, vous réussirez à vous payer la bagnole de vos rêves, celle que j’ai shootée dans ma dernière campagne, je l’aurai déjà démodée. J’ai trois vogue d’avance, et m’arrange toujours pour que vous soyez frustré. Le Glamour, c’est le pays où l’on n’arrive jamais. Je vous drogue à la nouveauté, et l’avantage avec la nouveauté, c’est qu’elle ne reste jamais neuve. Il y a toujours une nouvelle nouveauté pour faire vieillir la précédente. Vous faire baver, tel est mon sacerdoce. Dans ma profession, personne ne souhaite votre bonheur, parce que les gens heureux ne consomment pas.

Connaissez-vous la différence entre les riches et les pauvres ? Les pauvres vendent de la drogue pour s’acheter des Nike alors que les riches vendent des Nike pour s’acheter de la drogue.

Les hommes politiques ne contrôlent plus rien ; c’est l’économie qui gouverne. Le marketing est une perversion de la démocratie : c’est l’orchestre qui gouverne le chef. Ce sont les sondages qui font la politique, les tests qui font la publicité, les panels qui choisissent les disques diffusés à la radio, les “sneak previews” qui déterminent la fin des films de cinéma, les audimats qui font la télévision. […] Big Brother is not watching you, Big Brother is testing you. Mais le sondagisme est un conservatisme. C’est une abdication. On ne veut plus vous proposer quoi que ce soit qui puisse RISQUER de vous déplaire. C’est ainsi qu’on tue l’innovation, l’originalité, la création, la rebellion. Tout le reste en découle. Nos existences clonées… Notre hébétude somnambule… L’isolement des êtres… La laideur universelle anesthésiée….

Picasso est un nom de bagnole Citroën, Steve Mc-Queen conduit une Ford, Audrey Hepburn porte des mocassins Tod’s ! Tu crois qu’ils se retournent pas dans leur tombe, ces gens-là, d’être transformés en VRP posthumes ? C’est la nuit des morts-vivants ! Cannibal Holocaust ! On bouffe du cadavre ! Les zombies font vendre !

Toutes ces marques sont rigoureusement inattaquables. Elles ont le droit de vous parler mais vous n’avez pas le droit de leur répondre. Dans la presse, vous pouvez dire des horreurs sur des personnes humaines mais essayez un peu de descendre un annonceur et vous risquez très vite de faire perdre à votre journal des millions de francs de rentrées publicitaires. A la télévision, c’est encore plus retors : une loi interdit de citer des marques à l’antenne pour éviter la publicité clandestine ; en réalité, cela empêche de les critiquer. Les marques ont le droit de s’exprimer tant qu’elles le veulent (et paient ce droit très cher), mais on ne peut jamais leur répondre. »

 

frederic_Beigbeder

Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)

 

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op 21 september 1934 te Montréal.

Stranger Song

It’s true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.
And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he’ll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger

And then leaning on your window sill
he’ll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he’ll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

But now another stranger seems
to want you to ignore his dreams
as though they were the burden of some other
O you’ve seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it’s rusted from the elbows to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there’s a highway
that is curling
up like smoke above his shoulder.
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

You tell him to come in sit down
but something makes you turn around
The door is open you can’t close your shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger.

Well, I’ve been waiting, I was sure
we’d meet between the trains we’re waiting for
I think it’s time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter
When he talks like this
you don’t know what he’s after
When he speaks like this,
you don’t know what he’s after.

Let’s meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that’s warm
You realize, he’s only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say ok the bridge or someplace later.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind …

And leaning on your window sill …

I told you when I came I was a stranger.

 

 

leonard-cohen-never-drinks-wine

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

Voor onderstaande schrijvers zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2006.

 

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe).

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent.

Eckermann, Cohen en Wells

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Eckermann is vooral bekend geworden door zijn opgetekende en uitgegeven gesprekken met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Hij publiceerde na de dood van dit Duitse genie negen jaar van gesprekken in boekvorm. Goethe wist van Eckermanns voornemen en stemde in met publicatie, onder de voorwaarde dat dit pas na zijn dood zou gebeuren. Het werk verscheen onder de titel Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens.

An Goethe

 

Wenn im Rechten ich begriffen,
Hab ich’s einzig Dir zu danken.
Denn im Irren, Suchen, Schwanken,
Hat mich Deine Hand ergriffen
Und auf rechten Weg geleitet,
Der, geebnet, fest, gebreitet,
Nicht in Sümpfe sich verlieret,
Nein! zum sichern Ziele führet.

 

Goethe

Der Deutschen Licht! Wer kann sich Dir vergleichen!
Was einzeln glänzt, muß neben Dir erbleichen.
Der Deutschen Stolz! ihr Haß! ihr Ruhmverschlinger!
Was einzeln groß – wird neben Dir geringer.

 

 

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 – 3 december 1854)

 

De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op  21 september 1934 te Montréal. Leonard Cohen werd geboren in een joodse middenklassefamilie in Montréal. Als tiener leerde hij gitaar spelen en formeerde een country/folkgroep genaamd the Buckskin Boys. Hij studeerde letteren aan de McGill University met als doel dichter te worden en debuteerde in 1956 met Let Us Compare Mythologie. Reeds in 1961 was hij in Canadese poëziekringen een bekende naam.In 1967 verhuisde Cohen naar de Verenigde Staten, waar hij een reputatie als singer-songwriter vestigde.

TO A FELLOW STUDENT

I thought about you a lot.
I still do.
You sat still,
your hands clasped on your lap
like a schoolchild.
You were allowed to cry
because you have been true
to your grief.
I saw you today
sitting in the same way,
the same tears on your cheeks,
as if you had not moved
in all these years –
the same bad headache
in your right eye,
the same housefly
trying to fertilize your lips.
Old friend, you’re a mess
by every measure
except the ladder of love.

 

THE ONLY POEM

This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn’t kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn’t turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn’t sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me


Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 Hij werd vooral bekend door zijn sciencefictionverhalen zoals The Invisible Man and The Time Machine. Zijn roman The War of the Worlds werd later beroemd door het hoorspel van Orson Welles dat ophef maakte in 1938. In 2005 verscheen van Steven Spielberg een spectaculaire rampenfilm gebaseerd op hetzelfde boek.

Uit: The War of the Worlds (hoofdstuk 1)

 

The Eve of the War

 

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?… Are we or they Lords of the World?… And how are all things made for man?–
Kepler (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man`s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)