Tag: Luisa Valenzuela

Luisa Valenzuela, William Cowper

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: The Mañana (Vertaald door Marguerite Feitlowitz)

“I know it’s Sunday but I’ve lost all notion of dates. The men only mark a few days of the week: Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays. Bastards. The air now has turned warm, it smells of spring. So it’s more than six months since they stormed in on us, in the middle of the dance, in the middle of the night. It was easy for them. We were sailing gently along, almost becalmed, the river barely slapping the sides of Mañana. Of the boat named Mañana, and also our Mañana, our future, because the day before we’d already realized how long five days afloat could be. But at the moment of the siege, we were celebrating like mad and they had no right, they had no right, a few of us screamed in the face of a few of them once the fracas cooled and we could grasp what had just happened. If they really and truly had to do it—if the order was so iron-clad—they could have chosen another moment, for example, unleashed themselves during one of our most heated arguments.
They did it deliberately during the dance, the best part of our conclave which among ourselves and with a good dose of irony we named the FimFen, First Confidential Meeting of Female Novelists. They threw themselves at us once our conflicts had been filed down, once we’d battled with language and played with it and trampled it and even splashed around in it as in preverbal times, and to celebrate all this we were dancing like crazy, really kicking it up, even Ophelia in her wheelchair was dancing…
In that very first sudden instant, we were happy to see them. Men! We were delighted, men! Like it was manna fallen from heaven. Totally the opposite. More like released from the river, from the tame and heavy water that had been our friend until that moment when the wide river turned traitor and allowed those minions to sneak onto our boat in their rubber boots, their black rubber boots, their black everything. Everything they wore was black, but their skin tones were every color—the youngest were darker, the ones in charge contemptibly white. But when sheathed in black they burst into the dining room—we’d moved the tables for the sarao—they looked divine. Especially a few, to a few of us, looked especially divine. A male body can be very good for dancing and other carnal pursuits. At least for some of us, like Ophelia who was the first who managed to get close, wheelchair and all.
Holy sh–! we yelled, come aboard! we yelled once the shock faded and we thought we could turn the tables and pounce on the men who just moments before had silently invaded our ship. Come aboard! we yelled, as though flipping the rules, though they looked less like pirates and more like the storm troops they really were. Adela, our DJ, switched to heavy metal and for a few instants we fantasized that these men in black had come to throw us in the air like the rock-and-roll of times past.”

 

Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

 

De Engelse dichter William Cowper werd geboren op 26 november 1731 in Berkhamstead, Herford. Zie ook alle tags voor William Cowper op dit blog.

 

God gaat Zijn ongekende gang

God gaat Zijn ongekende gang
vol donkere majesteit,
die in de zee Zijn voetstap plant
en op de wolken rijdt.

Uit grondeloze diepten put
Hij licht en vreugd ‘uit pijn.
Hij voert volmaakt zijn plannen uit,
Zijn wil is soeverein.

Geliefden Gods, schept nieuwe moed,
de wolken die gij vreest,
zijn zwaar van regen, overvloed
van zegen allermeest.

Zoudt gij verstaan waar Hij u leidt?
Vertrouw Hem waar Hij gaat.
Zijn duistere voorzienigheid
verhult zijn mild gelaat.

Wat Hij bedoelt dat rijpt tot zin,
wordt klaar van uur tot uur.
De knop is bitter, is begin,
de bloem wordt licht en puur.

Hoe blind vanuit zichzelve is
het menselijk gezicht.
God zelf vertaalt de duisternis
in eindelijk eeuwig licht

 

Vertaald door Harm-Jan Breugem

 

William Cowper (26 november 1731 – 25 april 1800)
Portret door Lemuel Francis Abbott, 1792

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e november ook mijn blog van 26 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 november 2017 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

Dein König kommt in niedern Hüllen (Friedrich Rückert), Luisa Valenzuela, Nicole Brossard

 

Bij Christus Koning

 

Christus Koning-beeld voor de Sint-Josephkerk in Alkmaar

 

Dein König kommt in niedern Hüllen

Dein König kommt in niedern Hüllen,
ihn trägt der lastbarn Es’lin Füllen,
empfang ihn froh, Jerusalem!
Trag ihm entgegen Friedenspalmen,
bestreu den Pfad mit grünen Halmen;
so ist’s dem Herren angenehm.

O mächt’ger Herrscher ohne Heere,
gewalt’ger Kämpfer ohne Speere,
o Friedefürst von großer Macht!
Es wollen dir der Erde Herren
den Weg zu deinem Throne sperren,
doch du gewinnst ihn ohne Schlacht.

Dein Reich ist nicht von dieser Erden,
doch aller Erde Reiche werden
dem, das du gründest, untertan.
Bewaffnet mit des Glaubens Worten
zieht deine Schar nach allen Orten
der Welt hinaus und macht dir Bahn.

Und wo du kommst herangezogen,
da ebnen sich des Meeres Wogen,
es schweigt der Sturm, von dir bedroht.
Du kommst, dass auf empörter Erde
der neue Bund gestiftet werde,
und schlägst in Fessel Sünd und Tod.

O Herr von großer Huld und Treue,
o komme du auch jetzt aufs Neue
zu uns, die wir sind schwer verstört.
Not ist es, dass du selbst hienieden
kommst, zu erneuen deinen Frieden,
dagegen sich die Welt empört.

O lass dein Licht auf Erden siegen,
die Macht der Finsternis erliegen
und lösch der Zwietracht Glimmen aus,
dass wir, die Völker und die Thronen,
vereint als Brüder wieder wohnen
in deines großen Vaters Haus.

 

Friedrich Rückert (16 mei 1788 – 31 januari 1866)
De Heilig-Geist-Kirche in Schweinfurt, de geboorteplaats van Friedrich Rückert

 

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: Other Weapons (Vertaald door Deborah Bonner)

The Words
“She doesn’t find it the least bit surprising that she has no memory, that she feels completely devoid of recollections. She may not even realize that she’s living in an absolute void. She is quite concerned( about: t: something else, about her capacity to find the right word for each thing and receive a cup of tea when she says I want (and that “I want” also disconcerts her, that act of willing) when she says I want a cup of tea. Martina attends to all her requests. And she knows that’s her name because Martina herself has told her so, repeating it over and over until she managed to • retain the name. As for herself, she’s been told she’s called Laura, but that’s also part of the haze in which her life drifts by.
There’s also the man: that one, him, the no-name she can call by any name that happens to cross her mind; they’re all just as effective, anyway, and when the guy’s around the house he answers even if she calls him Hugo, Sebastian, Ignacio, Alfredo or anything else. He seems to be around the house often enough to keep her calm, a little, stroking her shoulders and arms, in a progression not lacking in tenderness. Then there are the everyday objects: the ones called plate, bathroom, book, bed, cup, table, door. It’s exasperating, for example, to confront the one called door and try to figure out what to do. A locked door, yes, but there are the keys, on the ledge, within her reach, and the lock’s easy to open, her fascination with the beyond, which she can’t make up her mind to face. She, so-called Laura, is on this side of the so-called door, with its so-called locks and its so-called key begging her to cross the threshold. But she can’t; not yet. Facing the door, she thinks about it and realizes she can’t, although no one appears to care much. Suddenly the so-called door opens and the man we will now call Hector walks in, proving that he also has his set of so-called keys and uses them quite freely. If she stares at him when he walks in —it’s happened to so-called Laura before – she discovers that two other men arrive with Hector and stay outside the door, trying to look inconspicuous. She calls them One and Two, which sometimes gives her a sense of safety and other times makes a shudder run through her. Then she welcomes him knowing that One and Two are standing outside the apartment (apartment?) right outside the so-called door, maybe waiting or protecting him, and sometimes she can imagine that they’re with her and that they escort her, especially when he stares into her eyes as if he were weighing out the memory of old things about her which she doesn’t share in the least. Sometimes her head aches, and that pain is the only thing that really belongs to her and that she can communicate to the man. Then he gets worried, both hoping and fearing that she’ll remember something specific.”

 

Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

 

De Canadese dichteres en schrijfster Nicole Brossard werd geboren op 27 november 1943 in Montreal (Quebec). Zie ook alle tags voor Nicole Brossard op dit blog.

 

Steden met hun doden

geen begraafplaatsen eigenlijk alleen de doden
woorden om niet te zeggen, geen voornamen, niemands naam
nog geen ongeluk, kleine voetstapjes die bevriezen
elk jaar loop ik door een nieuwe stad
met woorden, botten, haar, bril
ik loop met iemand die een boek heeft geschreven
“toen op zijn tenen wegging”*
om de horizon de dag na de horizon te vinden

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

Nicole Brossard (Montreal, 27 november 1943)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e november ook mijn blog van 26 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 november 2017 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

Luisa Valenzuela, Nicole Brossard

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: The Journey (Vertaald door Pablo Baler and Matt Losada)

“She spent days trying to get in touch with Bolek by phone. She had no idea how she gave her master class at the Anthropological Association with such galloping anguish. On automatic pilot, of course. Friday at noon she opted for a decisive step. She called the Tel Aviv company and rented a car in order to pick him up at Creedmoor, that grand psychiatric institution. She arrived in one hour; that is, a bit before one, caught Bolek outside his sancta santorum , or better said, his lunatic lunaticorum, and I’ll have him give me some explanations that cannot be given over the phone. He leaves me insulting messages; he is about to get into a plane without even telling me and to top it all off he doesn’t return my calls. It’s too much. No one plays with me. Going by car would cost almost the same reasonable price as going to Kennedy, she had calculated, and she was not wrong. Now she is at home hurrying to get ready. She intends to send the car away at the door of Creedmoor as one who burns her own bridges. She can’t find the map with the directions, in desperation overturns a pile of papers on the kitchen counter, as an answer to her desperation the blessed map appears and she can finally set sail. She tells the driver Take the Triborough to LaGuardia airport and follow Grand Central Parkway to Union Turnpike, exit 22. The second exit, not the first one, eh? since it’s chaotic around here and if you get distracted for a second you get lost forever. Parallel lines do intersect, that is true, and the most dramatic part of it is that once they intersect they start irremissibly moving away from each other, and suddenly you take a street right next to another one and a bit further on you find yourself miles away from your destination. The driver is an unflappable guy. He’s only interested in exact directions. Maybe he thinks his passenger is going to the mental hospital to check herself in by her own will and he’d rather take no chances. His silence protects him, like the thick bullet-proof Plexiglas taxi drivers have on the back of their seats, with a tiny slot for the cash. It’s true that if she had to check herself in—none of us is exempted from having a breakdown—she would fight with her last speck of reason to not be committed by someone else. She would sign her own sentence; she knows the mechanics of it because one time she attended the drama of some old, poor parents who could not free their own daughter from a certain psychiatric institution for the simple reason that they had signed her in themselves. All this is very complex and it’s not to the point, except to define the strange laws governing the confinement of the insane, the pseudo-insane and the mentally disturbed in this part of the planet.”

 

Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

 

De Canadese dichteres en schrijfster Nicole Brossard werd geboren op 27 november 1943 in Montreal (Quebec). Zie ook alle tags voor Nicole Brossard op dit blog.

 

Steden met hun oesters

zout op de wangen, daar hou ik van
deze smaak van intieme materie die voedt
gedachten, viooltjes, wijn, blote schouders van zomeravonden
in Sète, Sitges en in de hele Memramcook-vallei
het hoofd boven de stilte
Ik kan mezelf onderdompelen in de oester en het heldere zeezout

grijs, roze of zonder vuur
steden schoongeveegd door het ochtendgloren
overgevlogen als mijnenvelden
met antwoorden ver weg begraven
die lijken op fantoompijn omgeven door
blauwe bloemblaadjes van een middag
steden in het heden zonder afscheid te nemen

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

Nicole Brossard (Montreal, 27 november 1943)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e november ook mijn blog van 26 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 november 2017 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

Luisa Valenzuela, Mohamed Al-Harthy

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: Dark Desires And The Others (Vertaald door Susan E. Clark)

“Further along the dates will have to be erased, but at the end of ’78, the person I was then was getting ready to jump, knowing her absence will be a long one. She’s been invited to be Writer in Residence at Columbia University for a semester, and that will be — she intuits already — the longest semester of her life. She breathes in huge gulps of her city’s air, the verb a lie at the time, because the air had become unbreathable. With vandal-like delight she is disemboweling her library. Some books will have to disappear — the word alone produces goose bumps — others are simply dismantled in order to preserve this story or that essay or those three chapters that she knows she’ll need for her course, or that she wants to keep with her in spite of the weight limit on planes. Get rid of everything to be able to leave as lightly as possible. She knows that if she stays in her own country, she won’t write anymore. She can’t show her latest work to anyone. She’s afraid of putting those readers in danger. She also has notebooks and notebooks — disheveled, awkward diaries with no continuity at all. From those she likewise vandalizes — or, in this case, rescues — some fragments that will later form the microstories of a volume titled precisely Libro que no muerde (Book that Doesn’t Bite). And it didn’t, really, unless we say that irony has a bite. Those were certainly times that lent themselves to furious biting. She did what she could with regard to the situation; she got involved and she wrote and later she wrote partly about her involvement. These pages however, only took in the shrapnel — shrapnel that was noted down in new and multiple foreign notebooks. So that all that’s left is to write the good-bye bite:
Her loved one of the time, ex-loved one now because of his abandoning her when everything seemed to promise the opposite, reappears after almost a year of absence in order to declare his passion and his anguish and to confess his error. The woman I was then has one foot already in the stirrup and treats him with disdain, and when he desperately swears that he will never stop searching for her, and asks, using these exact words, “Now what do I do?” she answers, “Become a man,” and turns right around.
So that’s where, in New York, and without realizing it, her notes about herself, about her efforts to become a woman, begin.”

 

Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

 

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata

De Omaanse dichter Mohamed Al-Harthy werd geboren in al-Mudhayrib, Oman, in 1962. Zie ook alle tags voor Mohamed Al-Harthy op dit blog.

 

PAUSING IN THE GARDEN

Pauses are a bit like resting, and you cannot do without them when reading if you want to fully experience the poetic moment that flows from every verse, and that is carried by the overall harmony of the poem; for the pause is not some typographical device, but rather a psychological state. And sometimes it is more important than the verse that precedes it.
– the Peruvian poet Alberto Hidalgo

I will rest, poet, I will rest . . .
I will follow the signposts,
whether or not I stumble on the road,
and I will add more stumbling blocks
once I’ve crossed the threshold:
 
a small stone on which to pause and catch my breath
between the gasping verses;
or a rock still on its way to the abyss,
teetering now on the brink of the void
that the painter’s brush forgot to color in,
between Yeats’ stone and the rock on which they displayed
the poetry of Imru al-Qays . . .
where every poem before it’s born
carries within itself
descendants and ancestors, whether the stumbling
between one verse
and another
takes forever
or no time at all.
 
For some reason
 —or none at all—
a parenthesis
shone in the verse:
it might ruin the flow, might slow things down,
unless the (opening and closing) parentheses snatch up the verse—
if they even exist, that is.
And if they don’t exist, then the trap
is hidden between the lines,
and will conceal
or reveal
a sudden interruption
in the rhythm.
 
Forget about the dotted lines
(that say nothing)
…………………………….
…………………………….
although they say everything in this garden
where I’m pausing
—that which can be dispensed with,
and that which cannot—
because they are the poem’s guardian angel
in eternal wagers that do not settle
for the permanence of rock or stone,
so that the poem might live each day, so that it might live
its endless life
between the pages of a book. 

 

Vertaald door Kareem James Abu-Zeid

 

Mohamed Al-Harthy (al-Mudhayrib, 1962) 

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e november ook mijn blog van 26 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 november 2017 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

Luisa Valenzuela, Mohamed Al-Harthy

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: Dark Desires And The Others (Vertaald door Susan E. Clark)

“October 2, 1978
On the Eve of the Trip
You’ll think that I died, and something like that is indeed happening or has happened. You can’t tell anymore what’s alive and what’s dead, or rather, who’s going around these worlds, seemingly dying. Remembering is like being left hanging from something that you don’t have anymore — if you ever really had it — one reason to be more or less agglutinate, magnetic. Valid.
Remembering here and now, in my house in Buenos Aires, as if I were at the top of a mountain, and even further, as if I were lying at the bottom of the sea, which is where these things tend to happen. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes the memories flow when it gets dark; they appear and they fade, they amaze us at the turn of a page and perhaps we should hurry to retain them. Perhaps we should offer more to memory, that form of madness.
I found a piece of paper. I found a writing pad — and I write and I write and I write. I’ll write until the ink runs out and there’s nothing left of what I care about to jot down.
Here there is order, calm. I don’t want to leave this house anymore. I don’t want to be distracted. I prefer to keep seeing objects that I’m fond of, encouraging the winds of inspiration, getting up early and sometimes running through the park to buy something to eat or more ink. Refill the cartridges. Cartridges of ink to write a bit, fire more shots, all made of words. And now — now that the phone isn’t working — how I long to stay here shut in between these caressing walls! I feel so good facing myself, facing mountains that look like water, but which are really wool, mountains woven stitch by stitch, only suggested. A small tapestry that will accompany me on my trip, though I no longer want to travel.
I’ll go all the same.
The house is beautiful, I like each and every thing, and the cats are playing in the middle of the room and tralala tralala. I keep on in my singsong and can’t get away from it. And again my doubts: “To go out or not to go out? To bathe or not to bathe?”
How I need the little securities of life, or should I say, how I’d like to have the larger ones! I would like not to have to take the plane or the boat, not to climb once more into that enormous floating belly, to float in that endless amniotic fluid, the ocean — and go sailing peacefully toward other latitudes, writing my novels. I have to learn how to write during this trip, an errant writer so to speak — a roving writer.”

 

Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

 

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata

De Omaanse dichter Mohamed Al-Harthy werd geboren in al-Mudhayrib, Oman, in 1962. Zie ook alle tags voor Mohamed Al-Harthy op dit blog.

 

HET FLUITSIGNAAL VAN DE ENGEL

Wie ben jij in de spiegel van de zin? Begin of einde
weerkaatst op het blad van de vloed . . .
en wat als jij de spiegel was – wordt de bekleding van het vers dan gekeerd?
breekt dan de hel los?. . .
of zal het fluitsignaal van de engel uitstel geven tot de avondster zich spiegelt
in het water van de woordenzee voordat de vloed terugkeert als een zin
die in de lengte wordt gelezen (niet in de breedte) om het spel van spiegels te verlengen . . .
Maar wie ben jij in de spiegelingen op het oppervlak na het einde van de vloed?
Begin of einde – wie ben jij? Als de woordenkrokodil de kaken opent
om een ster te verslinden dan straalt de ster zoals sterren stralen . . .
enkele momenten of een eeuwigheid – maar je zult haar spiegeling niet zien
als de vloed zich in de zee van een nieuwe zin stort

 

Vertaald door Kees Nijland & Assad Jaber

 

Mohamed Al-Harthy (al-Mudhayrib, 1962)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e november ook mijn blog van 26 november 2018 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 november 2017 deel 1 en eveneens deel 2.

Luisa Valenzuela, Eugène Ionesco, Marilynne Robinson, Herman Gorter, Paul Rodenko, Mihály Babits, Louis Verbeeck, Alyosha Brell, Mohamed Al-Harthy

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: Strange things happen here (Vertaald door Helen lane)

“He sure needed a jacket like this one, a sports jacket, well lined, lined with cash not silk who titres about silk? With the booty in hand they head back home. They don’t have the nerve to take out one of the crisp bills that Mario thought he had glimpsed when he opened the briefcase just a hair-spare change to take a taxi or a stinking bus. They keep an eye peeled to see whether the strange things that are going on hem, the things they happened to overhear in the cafe, have something to do with their two finds. The strange characters either haven’t appeared in this part of town or have been replaced: two policemen per corner an too many because them are lots of corners. This is not a gray afternoon like any other, and come to think of it maybe it isn’t even a lucky afternoon the way it appears to be. These are the blank faces of a weekday, so different from the blank faces on Sunday. Pedro and Mario have a color now, they have a . mask and can feel themselves exist because a briefcase (ugly word) and a sports jacket blossomed in their path. (A jacket that’s not as new as it appeared to be-threadbare but respectable. That’s it: a respectable jacket.) As afternoons go, this isn’t an easy one. Something is moving in the air with the howl of the sirens and they’re beginning to feel fingered. They see police everywhere, police in the dark hallways, in pairs on all the corners in the city, police bouncing up and down on their motorcycles against traffic as though the proper functioning of the country depended on them, as maybe it does, yes, that’s why things are as they are and Mario doesn’t dare say that aloud because the briefcase has him tongue-tied, not that there’s a microphone concealed in it, but what paranoia, when nobody ’s forcing him to carry it! He could get rid of it in some dark alley-but how can you let go of a fortune that’s practically fallen in your lap, even if the fortune’s got a load of dynamite inside? He takes a more natural grip on the briefcase, holds it affectionately, not as though it were about to explode. At this same moment Pedro decides to put the jacket on and it’s a little too big for him but not ridiculous, no not at all. Loose-fitting, yes, but not ridiculous; comfortable, warm, affectionate, just a little bit frayed at the edges, worn. Pedro puts his hands in the pockets of the jacket (his pockets) and discovers a few old bus tickets, a dirty handkerchief, several bills, and some coins. He can’t bring himself to say anything to Mario and suddenly he turns around to see if they’re being followed. Maybe they’ve fallen into some sort of trap, and Mario must be feeling the same way because he isn’t saying a word either. He’s whistling between his teeth with the expression of a guy who’s been carrying around a ridiculous black briefcase like this all his life. The situation doesn’t seem quite as bright as it did in the beginning.”

 

 
Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

 

De Frans-Roemeense schrijver Eugène Ionesco werd geboren op 26 november 1912 in Slatina, Roemenië. Zie ook alle tags voor Eugène Ionesco op dit blog.

Uit: Rhinocéros (Vertaald door Derek Prouse)

“JEAN: It’s different with me. I don’t like waiting; I’ve no time to waste. And as you’re never on time, I come late on purpose—at a time when I presume you’ll be there.
BERENGER: You’re right … quite right, but …
JEAN: Now don’t try to pretend you’re ever on time!
BERENGER: No, of course not … I wouldn’t say that.
[JEAN and BERENGER have sat down.]
JEAN: There you are, you see!
BERENGER: What are you drinking?
JEAN: You mean to say you’ve got a thirst even at this time in the morning?
BERENGER: It’s so hot and dry.
JEAN: The more you drink the thirstier you get, popular science tells us that…
BERENGER: It would be less dry, and we’d be less thirsty, if they’d invent us some scientific clouds in the sky.
JEAN: [studying BERENGER closely] That wouldn’t help you any. You’re not thirsty for water, Berenger
BERENGER: I don’t understand what you mean.
JEAN: You know perfectly well what I mean. I’m talking about your parched throat. That’s a territory that can’t get enough!
BERENGER: To compare my throat to a piece of land seems,..
JEAN: [interrupting him] You’re in a bad way, my friend.
BERENGER: In a bad way? You think so?
JEAN: I’m not blind, you know. You’re dropping with fatigue. You’ve gone without your sleep again, you yawn all the time, you’re dead-tired … “

 


Eugène Ionesco (26 november 1912 – 28 maart 1994)
Scene uit een opvoering in Brussel, 2016

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Marilynne Robinson werd geboren in Sandpoint, Idaho op 26 november 1943. Zie ook alle tags voor Marilynne Robonson op dit blog.

Uit: Gilead

“My grandfather seemed to me stricken and afflicted, and indeed he was, like a man everlastingly struck by lightning, so that there was an ashiness about his clothes and his hair never settled and his eye had a look of tragic alarm when he wasn’t actually sleeping. He was the most unreposeful human being I ever knew, except for certain of his friends. All of them could sit on their heels into their old age, and they’d do it by preference, as if they had a grudge against furniture. They had no flesh on them at all. They were like the Hebrew prophets in some unwilling retirement, or like the primitive church still waiting to judge the angels. There was one old fellow whose blessing and baptizing hand had a twist burned into it because he had taken hold of a young Jayhawker’s gun by the barrel. ‘I thought, That child doesn’t want to shoot me,’ he would say. ‘He was five years shy of a whisker. He should have been home with his mama. So I said, “Just give me that thing,” and he did, grinning a little as he did it. I couldn’t drop the gun – I thought that might be the joke – and I couldn’t shift it to the other hand because that arm was in a sling. So I just walked off with it.’ They had been to Lane and Oberlin, and they knew their Hebrew and their Greek and their Locke and their Milton. Some of them even set up a nice little college in Tabor. It lasted quite a while. The people who graduated from it, especially the young women, would go by themselves to the other side of the earth as teachers and missionaries and come back decades later to tell us about Turkey and Korea. Still, they were bodacious old men, the lot of them. It was the most natural thing in the world that my grandfather’s grave would look like a place where someone had tried to smother a fire.
Just now I was listening to a song on the radio, standing there swaying to it a little, I guess, because your mother saw me from the hallway and she said, ‘I could show you how to do that.’ She came and put her arms around me and put her head on my shoulder, and after a while she said, in the gentlest voice you could ever imagine, ‘Why’d you have to be so damn old?’ I ask myself the same question.
A few days ago you and your mother came home with flowers. I knew where you had been. Of course she takes you up there, to get you a little used to the place. And I hear she’s made it very pretty, too. She’s a thoughtful woman. You had honeysuckle, and you showed me how to suck the nectar out of the blossoms. You would bite the little tip off a flower and then hand it to me, and I pretended I didn’t know how to go about it, and I would put the whole flower in my mouth, and pretend to chew it and swallow it, or I’d act as if it were a little whistle and try to blow through it, and you’d laugh and laugh and say, No! no! no!! And then I pretended I had a bee buzzing around in my mouth, and you said, ‘No, you don’t, there wasn’t any bee!’ and I grabbed you around the shoulders and blew into your ear and you jumped up as though you thought maybe there was a bee after all, and you laughed, and then you got serious and you said, ‘I want you to do this.’ And then you put your hand on my cheek and touched the flower to my lips, so gently and carefully, and said, ‘Now sip.’ You said, ‘You have to take your medicine.’ So I did, and it tasted exactly like honeysuckle, just the way it did when I was your age and it seemed to grow on every fence post and porch railing in creation.”

 


Marilynne Robinson (Sandpoint, 26 november 1943)

 

De Nederlandse dichter Herman Gorter werd geboren in Wormerveer op 26 november 1864. Zie ook alle tags voor Herman Gorter op dit blog.

 

Uit de donkere aarde …

Uit de donkere aarde
Komt op het licht,
En het Heelal zweeft in het licht
Der Liefde.

Gij ligt in ’t licht der Eeuwigheid,
In dat licht, dat zich om ons breidt,
Zweef ik.

O niet van mij het licht,
Dat zich over u breidt,
Het is, het is het licht
Der Eeuwigheid.

O niet van u het licht,
Dat zich uit u verspreidt,
Het is, het is het licht
Der Liefde der Eeuwigheid.
Gij ligt daarin,
Ik zweef daarin.

 

Uit: Mei

Toen luider lachend wentelde hij rond
En zwom naar boven door den waterval
Van schuim en sneeuw, die drijft in ieder dal
Tusschen twee waterbergen, zie, hij ligt
Nest’lend in kroezig water, ’n wiegewicht
Door moeder pas gewasschen in haar schoot;
Het drijft van ronde druppels, overrood
Reiken de armpjes, uit het mondje gaat
Gekraai; zoo dreef hij, in het bol gelaat
Tusschen de lippen in, de gouden kelk,
Fontein van gouden klanken, een vaas melk-
Wit was hij drijvend met gemengden wijn,
Vurig rood blozend door het porselein.
Nu zetelt hij in ’t water, baar na baar
Ziet hij al lachend rijzen na elkaar,
Daar schatert hij en spant den blanken arm,
En door het water gaat een luid alarm.

Toen werd de zee wel als een groot zwaar man
Van vroeger eeuw en kleding, rijker dan
Nu in dit land zijn: bruin fluweel en zij
Als zilver en zwart vilt en pelterij
Vèr uit Siberisch Rusland; geel koper
Brandt vele lichtjes in de plooien der
Hoozen, in knoopen en in passement
Van het breed overkleed, wijd uithangend.

 


Herman Gorter (26 november 1864 – 15 september 1927)
Portret, waarschijnlijk door Thérèse Schwartze, ca. 1883

 

De Nederlandse dichter, criticus, essayist en vertaler Paul Thomas Basilius Rodenko werd geboren in Den Haag op 26 november 1920. Zie ook alle tags voor Paul Rodenko op dit blog.

 

Prelude tot een Oekraïns epos

Stormen jagen over de steppe
junckers jagen over de steppe
dorpen schuiven klagende
in hun foedraal
van rook

Wie zal de gitaar van mijn ziel bespelen
wie zal de gitaar van mijn dorp bespelen
een meisjeshand
heeft zeven snaren doorgeknipt
ze zijn gesprongen met een klein geluid van eksters.

 

Jij-Mei

Ik mors je over al mijn paden liefste
Jij rood de rozen en jij blinkende het blauw
Jij kano’s in de blik van elke vrouw
Jij beelden in parijzen van het water
Jij lentebroden in de manden van de straten
Jij kinderen die met een hoofdvol mussen
Achter de zonnebal aandraven
Jij mei jij wij
Jij herteknieën van de zuidenwind

Ik juich je sterrelings

 

Laatseptembermorgenlicht

Gedaagd in kort geding
Straalsgewijs ondervraagd
Staat ’t nachtelijkste ding
Met potenvol vandaag
Het lichtrequisitoir
Maakt alles recht en klaar
Vaas liefste en trompet
Zijn bij elkaar gezet
Naar ninivehse wet
Van ’t onontkoombaar daar

 

 
Paul Rodenko (26 november 1920 – 9 juni 1976)

 

De Hongaarse dichter, schrijver en vertaler Mihály Babits werd geboren op 26 november 1883 in Szekszárd. Zie ook alle tags voor Mihály Babits op dit blog.

 

Zigeunerlied (Fragment)

‘Bündel an den Zweig geschwind,
schaukle nur, Zigeunerkind!
Maulbeerliebchen, schlafe ein,
winziges Zigeunerlein!
Wandern wirst durch dunkle Wälder,
schlechte Felder, gute Felder,
dir ist jedes Land egal,
Himmelblau gibt’s überall.
Bist in Busch und Strauch geboren,
hätt dich fast im Moos verloren.
Wie die Samen, die verwehen,
wirst du von der Mutter gehen,
vaterlos, mutterlos,
wandre nur, die Welt ist groß!

Gruselmärchen, lust’ge Lieder
singe ich dir immer wieder.
Winz’ge Seele, Maulbeerschätzchen,
überall gibt’s gute Plätzchen.
Kommt manchmal ein böser Wind,
fürcht dich nicht, Zigeunerkind.
Feuer gibt der trockne Ast,
wärmt dich bis zum Frühjahr fast.
Schlechte Ernte stöhnt der Bauer,
Dürre macht sein Leben sauer.
Kümmert’s dich? Auf keinen Fall.
Schatten gibt es überall.
Wandern will durch dunkle Wälder,
schlechte Felder, gute Felder,
dir ist jedes Land egal,
Himmelblau gibt’s überall.
Kommt der Jude durch den Wald,
schau dich um und schreie: halt!
Findst du eine Schöne hier,
fragst nicht lange, nimm sie dir.
Bist in Busch und Strauch geboren,
hätt dich fast im Moos verloren.
Wie die Samen, die verwehen,
wirst du von der Mutter gehen,
vaterlos, mutterlos, wandre nur,
die Welt ist groß!’

 

 
Mihály Babits (26 november 1883 – 4 augustus 1941)
Standbeeld in Szekszárd

 

De Vlaamse dichter, schrijver en columnist Louis Verbeeck werd geboren in Tessenderlo op 26 november 1932. Zie ook alle tags voor Louis Verbeeck op dit blog.

Uit: Roots (Column)

“Ze beginnen dat allemaal zo’n beetje in te zien, dat je terug naar je ‘roots’ moet. ‘Back to the basics’ zeggen sommigen, maar het komt er gewoon op neer, dat je niet moogt vergeten waar je vandaan komt.
Dus ging ik ook nog eens terug naar mijn dorp en ik dacht: ‘Ik rijd tot aan de zandberg, daar parkeer ik mijn auto en dan zien we we’l. En ik had en petje bij en een zonnebril, want ik wilde het incognito houden. De zandberg was er nog, maar wat in de tijd van mijn roots en mijn verbeelding misschien een grote zandbak geweest was, een soort van Sahara met veel bergop, daar schoot niet veel meer van over.
Er was wel van alles bijgekomen, een stuk of vijf “oases” waar je er uitgebreid kon voor zorgen dat je ‘roots’, je wortels dus, niet van droogte en van dorst zouden omkomen. Er was zelfs een terras, en ik dacht: daar ga ik even zitten om eens grondig te bekijken wat er van mijn roots overgebleven is.
Ik had nog maar net een leeg tafeltje gevonden, toen er een enthousiaste inboorling op mij toekwam en mij verrast vertelde wie ik was, zelfs met petje en onherkenbare zonnebril. Hij had dwars door mijn camouflage heen gekeken.
“Ken je mij niet meer?” vroeg hij, en hij zei dat hij Frans was, Sus, gelijk ze zeien en dat hij getrouwd was met Adeline. En Adeline, die had ik toch zeker nog gekend want die woonde vroeger vlak in mijn buurt, en als hij zich niet vergiste was Adeline nog zo’n beetje een oude vlam van mij geweest. “Grapje” lachte hij, “maar vroeger vertelde ze dat jullie samen in de muziekschool gezeten hadden, en vioolles gevolgd. Bij meester Job.”
Ik zette de camera van mijn roots wat scherper en jawel, Adeline kwam langzaam in beeld. Hij zei dat hij begreep dat ik me haar zo dadelijk niet herinnerde, ik was niet zo jong meer, hij trouwens ook niet, en het was allemaal zo lang geleden.”

 

 
Louis Verbeeck (26 november 1932 – 25 november 2017)

 

Onafhankelijk van geboortedata

De Duitse schrijver Alyosha Brell werd geboren in 1980 in Wesel. Zie ook alle tags voor Alyosha Brell op dit blog.

Uit: Kress

„Er hätte mehr sparen müssen, dachte Kress, während er sich an einen Gummiriemen geklammert von der U-Bahn durchschütteln ließ. Beispielsweise die schöne, historisch-kritische Hamburger Goethe-Ausgabe: Die hätte, strenggenommen, nicht sein müssen. Anderseits, er war nun einmal ein Goethe-Forscher, beziehungsweise beabsichtigte ein solcher zu werden, und die Hamburger Goethe-Ausgabe gehörte zum Goethe-Forscher wie der Fleischerhammer zum Fleischer. Die Hamburger Goethe-Ausgabe war, bei Lichte betrachtet, sogar unbedingt notwendig gewesen, daran war nicht zu rütteln, dort zu sparen wäre unvernünftig, wäre perspektivisch sogar berufsschädigend gewesen. Wirklich, U-Bahn-Fahren war das Letzte! Er hasste es, Schulter an Schulter mit all diesen Leuten stehen zu müssen, eingepfercht wie Schlachtvieh in einen Tiertransporter. Dienstagmorgens war die Situation besonders fatal. Dienstagmorgens krochen all jene Studenten aus ihren Löchern, die am Montag ihren Rausch vom Wochenende auszuschlafen pflegten. Mittwochmorgens entspannte sich die Lage ein wenig, weil die Studenten empfanden, bereits am Dienstag etwas geleistet und sich daher eine Pause verdient zu haben, und am Donnerstag war im Grunde schon Wochenende und Kress hatte die U-Bahn mehr oder minder für sich. Jetzt aber war erst einmal Dienstag und die Enge kaum auszuhalten. Er hatte sich einen strategisch günstigen Platz an einer Plexiglaswand neben der Tür gesichert. Direkt vor ihm, keine Fingerlänge entfernt, standen zwei Frauen und erzählten einander in großer Ausführlichkeit von den Aventüren, die ihnen am Wochenende widerfahren waren. »Und denn«, sagte die eine, »waren wir was trinken im Alhambra, und denn …« Kress hatte das Gefühl, vom bloßen Zuhören dümmer zu werden. Ein Leuchtturm war er, einsam Wacht haltend auf dem Felsen der Exzellenz. Dagegen brandete die Gischt der Banalität. Entsprechend froh war er, als am U-Bahnhof Dahlem-Dorf die Türen aufglitten und die Meute aus dem Waggon ins Freie drängte. Augenblicklich rempelte er sich an die Spitze der Bewegung. Es war ungewöhnlich warm für diese Jahreszeit, seit über einer Woche hatte sich am Himmel keine Wolke sehen lassen, und die Studenten, an denen er jetzt vorüberstapfte, hätten luftiger nicht gekleidet sein können: in kurze Hosen und T-Shirts und Röcke, aus denen die über lange Wintermonate entfärbten Glieder staken wie die weißen Tentakel von Tiefseequallen.“

 


Alyosha Brell (Wesel, 1980)

 

De Omaanse dichter Mohamed Al-Harthy werd geboren in al-Mudhayrib, Oman, in 1962. Zie ook alle tags voor Mohamed Al-Harthy op dit blog.

 

The Angel’s Whistling

Who are you reflected in the verse?
Its beginning
or its end
on the flowing page?
And what if, for all the controversy,
you really were its mirror?—Would the holy verse’s mantle
be cast off? Would all hell break loose?
Or would the angel’s whistling
hold hell off
until the star sees itself
reflected on the watery page,
reflected on the sea of words
before the tide brings the verse back?
One could read it
from top to bottom
(and not from right to left)
to prolong reflection’s game . . .

But who are you in these mirrors?
Who are you reflected on the page
once the tide’s gone out again?
Its beginning or its end?
Who are you when the words open
their crocodile jaws
to swallow a shining star? . . .
It might shine a few moments,
it might shine forever—but you,
you will not see its reflection
once the tide’s flowed on
to the next verse.

 

Vertaald door Kareem James Abu-Zeid

 

 
Mohamed Al-Harthy (al-Mudhayrib, 1962)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e november ook mijn blog van 26 november 2017 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.

Luisa Valenzuela, Eugène Ionesco, Marilynne Robinson, Louis Verbeeck, Mihály Babits

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: Strange things happen here (Vertaald door Helen lane)

“You see them on street corners, Even Elba said something about it the other day, can you imagine, she’s so nearsighted, Just like science fiction, they’ve landed from another planet even though they look like guys from the interior but with their hair so well combed, they’re nice and neat I tell you, and I asked one of them what time it was but didn’t get anywhere-they don’t have watches, of course, Why would they want a watch anyway, you might ask, if they live hi a different time from us? I saw them, too. They come out from under the pavement hi the streets and that’s where they still are and who knows what they’re looking for, though we do know that they leave holes in the streets, those enormous potholes they come out of that can’t ever be filled in, The guy with the vermouth isn’t listening to them, and neither are Mario and Pedro, who are worrying about a briefcase forgotten on a chair that’s bound to contain something of value because otherwise it wouldn’t have been forgotten just so they could get it, just the two of them, not the guy with the lots going on at the other end of the cafe and there’s nobody at this end and Mario and Pedro know it’s now or never. Mario comes out first with the briefcase under his arm and that’s why he’s the first to see a man’s jacket lying on top of a car next to the sidewalk. That is to say, the car is next to the sidewalk, so the jacket lying on the roof is too. A splendid jacket, of stupendous quality. Pedro sees it too, his legs shake because it’s too much of a coincidence, he could sure use a new jacket, especially one with the pockets stuffed with dough. Mario can’t work himself up to grabbing it. Pedro can, though with a certain remorse, which gets worse and practically explodes when he sees two cops coming toward them to .. “We found this car on a jacket. This jacket on a car. We don’t know what to do with it. The jacket, I mean.” “Well, leave it where you found it then. Don’t bother us with things like that, we have more important business to attend to.” More crucial business. Like the persecution of man by man if you’ll allow me to use that euphemism. And so the famous jacket is now in Pedro’s trembling hands, which have picked it up with much affection. »

 

 
Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

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Luisa Valenzuela, Eugène Ionesco, Marilynne Robinson, Louis Verbeeck, Mihály Babits

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: Strange things happen here (Vertaald door Helen lane)

“In the cafe on the corner-every self-respecting cafe is on a corner, every meeting place is a crossing of two paths (two lives)-Mario and Pedro each order a cup of black coffee and put lots of sogar in it because sogar is free and provides nourishment. Mario and Pedro have been flat broke for some time-not that they’re complaining, but it’s time they got lucky for a change-and suddenly they see the abandoned briefcase, and just by looking at each other they tell themselves that maybe the moment has come. Right here, boys, in the cafe on the corner, no diflerent from a hundred others. The briefcase is there all by itself on a chair leaning against the table, and nobody has come back to look for it. The neighborhood boys come and go, they exchange remarks that Mario and Pedro don’t listen to. There are more of them every day and they have a funny accent, they’re from the interior. I wonder what they‘re doing here, why they‘ve come. Mario and Pedro wonder if someone is going to sit down at the table in the back, move the chair, and find the briefcase that they almost love, almost caress and srnell and lick and kiss. A man finally comes and sits down at the table alone (and to think that the briefcase is probably full of money, and that guy‘s going to latch onto it for the modest price of a vermonth with lernon, which is what he finally asks for after taking a little while to make up his mind). They bring him the vermouth, along with a whole bunch of appetizers. Which olive, which little piece of cheese will he be raising to his month when he spots the briefcase on the chair next to his? Pedro and Mario don’t even want to think about it and yet it‘s all they can think about. When all is said and done the guy has as much or as little right to the briefcase as they do. When all is said and done it’s only a question of chance, a table more carfully chosen‚ and that’s it. The guy sips his drink indiffetentiy, swallowing one appetizer or another; the two of them can’t even order another coffee because they’re out of dough as might happen to you or to me, move perhaps to me than to you, but that‘s beside the point now that Pedro and Mario are being tyrannired by a guy who’s picking bits of salami out of his teeth with his fingernail as he finishes his drink, not seeing a thing and not listening to what the boys are saying. You see them on street corners.”

 

 
Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

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Luisa Valenzuela, Eugène Ionesco, Marilynne Robinson, Louis Verbeeck, William Cowper, Theophilus Cibber

De Argentijnse schrijfster Luisa Valenzuela werd geboren op 26 november 1938 in Buenos Aires. Zie ook alle tags voor Luisa Valenzuela op dit blog.

Uit: I’m your horse in the night (Vertaald door Deborah Bonner)

« Cachaca’s good drink. It goes down and up and down all the right tracks, and then stops to warm up the corners that need it most. Gal Costa’s voice is hot, she envelops us in its sound and half-dancing, half floating, we reach the bed. We lie down and keep on staring deep into each other’s eyes, continue caressing each other without allowing ourselves to give into the pure senses just yet. We continue recognizing, rediscovering each other.
Beto, I say, looking at him. I know that isn’t his real name, but it’s the only one I can call him out loud. He replied:
“We’ll make it some day, Chiquita, but let’s not talk now.”
It’s better that way. Better if he doesn’t start talking about how we’ll make it someday and ruin the wonder of what we’re about to attain right now, the two of us, all alone.
“A noite eu so teu cavala,” Gal Costa suddenly sings from the record player.
“I’m your horse in the night,” I translate slowly. And so to bind him in a spell and stop him from thinking about other things:
“It’s a saint’s song, like in the macumba. Someone who’s in a trance says she’s the horse of the spirit who’s riding her, she’s his mount.”
“Chiquita, you’re always getting carried away with esoteric meanings and witchcraft. You know perfectly well that she isn’t talking about spirits. If you’re my horse in the night it’s because I ride you, like this, see? …”

 
Luisa Valenzuela (Buenos Aires, 26 november 1938)

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Eugène Ionesco, Marilynne Robinson, Luisa Valenzuela, Louis Verbeeck, William Cowper

De Frans-Roemeense schrijver Eugène Ionesco werd geboren op 26 november 1912 in Slatina, Roemenië. Zie ook alle tags voor Eugène Ionesco op dit blog.

Uit: Victims of Duty

“MADELEINE: Well, my dear, you know, the law is necessary,and what’s necessary and indispensable is good, and everything ’s that good is nice. And it really is very nice indeed to be a good, law-abiding citizen and do one ’s duty and have a clear conscience!…
CHOUBERT: Yes, Madeleine. When one really thinks about it,you’re right. There is something to be said for the law.
MADELEINE: Of course there is.
CHOUBERT: Yes, yes. Renunciation has one important advantage: it’s political and mystical at the same time. It bears fruit on two levels.
MADELEINE: So you can kill two birds with one stone.
CHOUBERT: That’s what ’s so interesting about it.
MADELEINE: You see!
CHOUBERT: Besides, if I remember rightly from my historylessons, this system of government, the ‘detachment system’,has already been tried before, three centuries ago, and five centuries ago, nineteen centuries ago, too, and again last year…
MADELEINE: Nothing new under the sun!
CHOUBERT:…successfully too, on whole populations, in capital cities and in the countryside, [He gets up.] on nations, on nations like ours!
MADELEINE: Sit down.
CHOUBERT sits down again.
CHOUBERT: [sitting] Only, it’s true, it does demand the sacrifice of some of our creature comforts. It’s still rather a nuisance.
MADELEINE: Oh, not necessarily! …Sacrifice isn’t always so difficult. There’s sacrifice and sacrifice. Even if it is a bit of a nuisance right at the start, getting rid of some of our habits, once we’re rid of them, were rid of them, and you never really give them another thought!”

 

 
Eugène Ionesco (26 november 1912 – 28 maart 1994)
David Sinaiko (Choubert) en Felicia Benefield (Madeleine) in een uitvoering in San Francisco, 2008

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