Martin McDonagh, Erica Jong

De Engels-Ierse schrijver en regisseur Martin McDonagh werd geboren op 26 maart 1970 in Camberwell, Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin McDonagh op dit blog.

Uit: A Skull in Connemara

A knock at the front door, which pushes open immediately. Mairtin enters in a Man. Utd away shirt with ‘Keane’ on the back, blowing bubbles now and then.
Mairtin How is all?
Mary How are you, Mairtin?

Mick How are you, Mairtin? And close the door.
Mairtin I’ll close the door (Does so.) or was it a barn with a wide open door you were born in, me mam says. She says, was it a barn with a wide open door you were born in, Mary beag, and I say ‘You’re the get would know, Mam.’
Mary tuts.

Mairtin No, I say, you’re the woman would know, Mam. I do. That’s what I say, like. Because if anybody was to know where I was born, wouldn’t it be her? (Pause.) The Regional Hospital I was born. In Galway.
Mick We know where the Regional Hospital is.
Mairtin Aye. (To Mary.) Wasn’t it you was in there with your hip?
Mary No.

Mairtin It must’ve been somebody else so. Aye. Who was it? Somebody who fell down and was fat.
Mick What is it you’ve come over about, Mairtin?
Mairtin Father Welsh or Walsh sent me over. It was choir and I was disruptive. Is that poteen, Mick? You wouldn’t spare a drop?
Mick No I wouldn’t.
Mairtin Ah g’wan
Mary Why was you being disruptive in choir, Mairtin? You used to be a good little singer, God bless you.
Mairtin Ah, a pack of oul shite they sing now.
Mary tuts at his language.
Mairtin A pack of not very good songs they sing now, I mean. All wailing, and about fishes, and bears.
Mick About fishes and bears, is it?
Mairtin It is. That’s what I said, like. They said no, the youngsters like these ones. What’s the song they had us singing tonight? Something about if I was a bear I’d be happy enough, but I’m even more glad I’m human. Ah, a pile of oul wank it is. It’s only really the Christmas carols I do like.
Mick And in September you don’t get too much call for them.

Mairtin Is right, you don’t. But I think they should have them all year, instead of the skitter they do, because they do make you very Christmassy, like.”

 

Martin McDonagh (Camberwell, 26 maart 1970) 

 

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Erica Jong werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1942. Zie ook alle tags voor Erica Jong op dit blog.

 

Het gedicht kat

Soms wil het gedicht
niet komen;
het verbergt zich voor de dichter
als een speelse kat
die onder het huis
is gekropen
& schuilt tussen slakken,
wortels, spinnenogen,
een richel zo lang uit de zon
dat hij vochtig is
van de adem van de Trollenkoning.

Soms schiet het gedicht
er vandoor
als een terughoudende minnaar
die bang is om bezeten te worden,
om te veel te voelen,
om zijn essentiële eenzaamheid
te verliezen- die hij vrijheid
noemt.

Soms kan het gedicht
de passie van de dichter.
niet belonen.

Het gedicht is een dans
tussen dichter en gedicht,

maar soms wil het gedicht
gewoon niet dansen
en loert het aan de zijlijn
tikkend met zijn voeten –
jamben, trocheeën-
uit de pas met de muziek
van je mariachiband.

Als het gedicht niet komt,
zeg ik: besluip het.
Doe alsof het je niets kan schelen.
Ga in je stoel zitten
lees Shakespeare, Neruda,
de onsterfelijke Emily
en laat je drijven
op hun muziek.

Ga naar de keuken
en begin uien te pellen
voor zelfgemaakte sugo.

Voor je het weet,
zal het gedicht roepen
terwijl je rijpe tomaten
weg bubbelen
met inspiratie.

Als het hele huis vol is
met het zachte tomatenaroma,
begin je met het kneden van de pasta.

Wanneer je heen en weer deint
boven het vochtige, sensuele deeg,
het plooit naar jouw wil,
wanneer je de liefde bedrijven met dit manna
van meel en water,
zal het gedicht honger krijgen
en komen
net zoals een kat
thuiskomt
wanneer je haar het minst
verwacht.

 

Vertaald door Frans Roumen

 

Erica Jong (New York, 26 maart 1942)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e maart ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2021 en ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2020 en eveneens mijn blog van 26 maart 2019 en ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2017 deel 2.

Tennessee Williams, Martin McDonagh, Gregory Corso, Hwang Sun-won, Robert Frost, Patrick Süskind, A. E. Housman, Bettina Galvagni, Erica Jong

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

 

This Hour

At break of dawn the shape of life
Is chiselled with a keener knife,
And angularities emerge
From the illusion of a curve.

This is the hour that imparts
A special nudity to hearts,
When every secret thing is known
Inward to the very bone.

No mist of rain nor veil of snow
Can blur this stark intaglio
Of sculptured hill and hollowed plain,
Poignant as thought, distinct as pain.

This is the keen recurrent edge
Of shuttling time. The frosty hedge,
The arrowed song of birds betray
The sword unsheathed in break of day.

This is the hour when men who dare
Shake lightning from their unbound hair,
And cherish in their last retreat
The will to bear, the strength to meet
Unflinchingly and with iron heart
The steel that smites the breast apart!

 

My love was light

My love was light the old wives said —
Light was my love and better dead!

My love was of such little worth
Stones were but wasted on her tomb;
She left no kettle by the hearth,
No crying child nor silent loom.

My love drank wine the old wives said
And danced her empty days away;
She baked no bread, she spun no thread,
She shaped no vessels out of clay ….

But how should old wives understand
Eternally my heart must grieve,
The cup remembering in her hand,
The dance her ghostly feet still weave ….

My love was light the old wives said —
Light was my love and better dead!

 


Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)

 

De Engels-Ierse schrijver en regisseur Martin McDonagh werd geboren op 26 maart 1970 in Camberwell, Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Martin McDonagh op dit blog.

Uit: The Cripple of Inishmaan

“Billy I want to, Bobby. See, I never thought at all this day would come when I’d have to explain. I’d hoped I’d disappear forever to America. And I would’ve too, if they’d wanted me there. If they’d wanted me for the filming. But they didn’t want me. A blond lad from Fort Lauderdale they hired instead of me. He wasn’t crippled at all, but the Yank said ‘Ah, better to get a normal fella who can act crippled than a crippled fella who can’t fecking act at all.’ Except he said it ruder. (Pause.) I thought I’d done alright for meself with me acting. Hours I practiced in me hotel there. And all for nothing. (Pause.) I gave it a go anyways. I had to give it a go. I had to get away from this place, Babbybobby, be any means, just like me mammy and daddy had to get away from this place. (Pause.) Going drowning meself I’d often think of when I was here, just to . . . just to end the laughing at me, and the sniping at me, and the life of nothing but shuffling to the doctor’s and shuffling back from the doctor’s and pawing over the same oul books and finding any other way to piss another day away.
Another day of sniggering, or the patting me on the head like a broken-brained gosawer. The village orphan. The village cripple, and nothing more. Well, there are plenty round here just as crippled as me, only it isn’t on the outside it shows. (Pause.) But the thing is, you’re not one of them, Babbybobby, nor never were. You’ve a kind heart on you. I suppose that’s why it was so easy to cod you with the TB letter, but that’s why I was so sorry for codding you at the time and why I’m just as sorry now.
Especially for codding you with the same thing your Mrs passed from. Just I thought that would be more effective. But, in the long run, I thought, or I hoped, that if you had a choice between you being codded a while and me doing away with meself, once your anger had died down anyways, you’d choose you being codded every time. Was I wrong, Babbybobby? Was I?
Bobby slowly walks over to Billy, stops just in front of him, and lets a length of lead piping slide down his sleeve into his hand.
Bobby Aye.
Bobby raises the pipe . . .
Billy No, Bobby, no . . . !
Billy covers up as the pipe scythes down. Blackout, with the sounds of Billy’s pained screams and the pipe scything down again and again.”

 

 
Martin McDonagh (Camberwell, 26 maart 1970) 
Daniel Radcliffe als Billy in The Cripple of Inishmaan, Londen, 2013

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.

 

America Politica Historia, In Spontaneity (Fragment)

He looks and acts like a boyman.
He never looks cruel in uniform.
He is rednecked portly rich and jolly.
White-haired serious Harvard, kind and wry.
A convention man a family man a rotary man & practical joker.
He is moonfaced cunning well-meaning & righteously mean.
He is Madison Avenue, handsome, in-the-know, and superstitious.
He is odd, happy, quicker than light, shameless, and heroic
Great yawn of youth!
The young don’t seem interested in politics anymore.
Politics has lost its romance!
The “bloody kitchen” has drowned!
And all that is left are those granite
façades of Pentagon, Justice, and Department—
Politicians do not know youth!
They depend on the old
and the old depend on them
and lo! this has given youth a chance
to think of heaven in their independence.
No need to give them liberty or freedom
where they’re at—
When Stevenson in 1956 came to San Francisco
he campaigned in what he thought was an Italian section!
He spoke of Italy and Joe DiMaggio and spaghetti,
but all who were there, all for him,
were young beatniks! and when his car drove off
Ginsberg & I ran up to him and yelled:
“When are you going to free the poets from their attics!”
Great yawn of youth!
Mad beautiful oldyoung America has no candidate
the craziest wildest greatest country of them all!
and not one candidate—
Nixon arrives ever so temporal, self-made,
frontways sideways and backways,
could he be America’s against? Detour to vehicle?
Mast to wind? Shore to sea? Death to life?
The last President?

 

 
Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)
Cover

 

De Zuid-Koreaanse dichter en schrijver Hwang Sun-won werd geboren op 26 maart 1915 in Taedong, Zuid-Pyongan, in het hedendaagse Noord-Korea. Zie ook alle tags voor Hwang Sun-won op dit blog.

Uit: Cranes (Vertaald door David R. McCann)

“Once, when they were young, he had gone with Tŏkchae to swipe chestnuts from the old grandfather with the wen. It had been Sŏngsam’s turn to climb the tree. Next instant, the old grandfather was shouting at them. He slipped and fell out of the tree. The chestnut burs pierced his backside, but they just ran. Only when they had gone far enough so the old grandfather with the wen couldn’t follow, did he turn his backside to Tŏkchae. It hurt like anything, pulling out the chestnut burs. He couldn’t help the tears that trickled down. Tŏkchae suddenly reached out with a fistful of his own chestnuts and stuck them in Sŏngsam’s pocket….Sŏngsam threw away the cigarette he had just lit. He makes up his mind not to light another while escorting this fellow Tŏkchae.They reached the hill road. The hill is where he and Tŏkchae had gone all the time to cut fodder, until two years before Liberation when Sŏngsam moved to a place near Ch’ŏnt’ae, south of the 38th.Sŏngsam, overwhelmed by sudden anger, gave a shout.“You son of a…! How many people have you killed so far?”Only then does Tŏkchae look over, then lower his head again.“Sunnavabitch…! How many people have you killed?”Tŏkchae raises his head and turns his way. He shoots a look at Sŏngsam. His expression turns darker, and the edges of his mouth, surrounded by his dangling beard, quiver and shake.“So, that’s how you killed people?”Sunnavabitch! Somehow Sŏngsam’s heart feels relieved at its core. As if something blocking it has eased and fallen loose. But,“Some guy gets to be vice chairman of the Farmers Collective Committee, why didn’t you run off? Hiding out with some secret mission?”Tŏkchae says nothing.“Go ahead, tell the truth! What sort of mission was it you were hiding out to do?”But Tŏkchae just keeps walking silently along. Clear enough, this one is feeling caught. It’s good to see their faces at a moment like one is feeling caught. It’s good to see their faces at a moment like this, but he keeps his face turned away, and doesn’t look over.
Grasping the pistol that he carried at his waist, Sŏngsam says, “It’s no use trying to defend yourself. You’re going to be shot, no doubt about it. So you might as well tell the truth right here and now.”Without turning his head, Tŏkchae replies,“There’s nothing to defend myself about. I’m just the son of a dirt-poor farmer. I’m known as a guy who can handle the hard work, and that’s why I was made vice chairman of the Farmers Cooperative Committee. If that’s a crime to get killed for, there’s nothing to be done about it. All I’m good at, all I ever was good at to stay alive, is digging in the dirt.”He pauses for a moment.“My father is laid up now. It’s half a year already.”Tŏkchae’s father was a widower, a poor farmer getting old, caring just for his son Tŏkchae. Seven years ago his back had already given out and his face was covered with age spots.“You married?”A moment, and“Yeah, married.”“Who with?”“Short Stuff.”No. Short Stuff? This is great. Short Stuff. Kind of fat, and too short to know the skies were high, just how wide the earth is. Sort of a loner. They hadn’t liked that, so he and Tŏkchae, together they used to tease her all the time and make her cry. And now Tŏkchae had gone and married Short Stuff.”

 

 
Hwang Sun-won (26 maart 1915-14 september 2000)
Cover

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Robert Lee Frost werd geboren op 26 maart 1874 in San Francisco. Zie ook alle tags voor Robert Frost op dit blog.

 

Brown’s Descent (Fragment)

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;
He fell and made the lantern rattle
(But saved the light from going out.)
So half-way down he fought the battle

Incredulous of his own bad luck.
And then becoming reconciled
To everything, he gave it up
And came down like a coasting child.

Well—I—be—” that was all he said,
As standing in the river road,
He looked back up the slippery slope
(Two miles it was) to his abode.

Sometimes as an authority
On motor-cars, I’m asked if I
Should say our stock was petered out,
And this is my sincere reply:

Yankees are what they always were.
Don’t think Brown ever gave up hope
Of getting home again because
He couldn’t climb that slippery slope;

Or even thought of standing there
Until the January thaw
Should take the polish off the crust.
He bowed with grace to natural law,

And then went round it on his feet,
After the manner of our stock;
Not much concerned for those to whom,
At that particular time o’clock,

It must have looked as if the course
He steered was really straight away
From that which he was headed for—
Not much concerned for them, I say:

No more so than became a man—
And politician at odd seasons.
I’ve kept Brown standing in the cold
While I invested him with reasons;

But now he snapped his eyes three times;
Then shook his lantern, saying, “Ile’s
‘Bout out!” and took the long way home
By road, a matter of several miles.

 

 
Robert Frost (26 maart 1874 – 29 januari 1963) 
Cover

 

De Duitse schrijver Patrick Süskind werd geboren in Ambach op 26 maart 1949. Zie ook alle tags voor Patrick Süskind op dit blog.

Uit: Die Taube

„Anfang der fünfziger Jahre – Jonathan begann, an der Existenz eines Landarbeiters Gefallen zu finden – verlangte der Onkel, er solle sich zum Militärdienst melden, und Jonathan verpflichtete sich gehorsam für drei Jahre. Im ersten Jahr war er einzig damit beschäftigt, sich an die Widerwärtigkeiten des Horden- und Kasernenlebens zu gewöhnen. Im zweiten Jahr wurde er nach Indochina verschifft. Den größten Teil des dritten Jahres verbrachte er mit einem Fußschuß und einem Beinschuß und der Amöbenruhr im Lazarett. Als er im Frühjahr 1954 nach Puget zurückkehrte, war seine Schwester verschwunden, ausgewandert nach Kanada, hieß es. Der Onkel verlangte nun, daß sich Jonathan unverzüglich vereheliche, und zwar mit einem Mädchen namens Marie Baccouche aus dem Nachbarort Lauris, und Jonathan, der das Mädchen noch nie gesehen hatte, tat brav wie ihm geheißen, ja tat es sogar gerne, denn wenngleich er nur eine ungenaue Vorstellung von der Ehe besaß, so hoffte er doch, in ihr endlich jenen Zustand von monotoner Ruhe und Ereignislosigkeit zu finden, der das einzige war, wonach er sich sehnte. Aber bereits vier Monate später gebar Marie einen Knaben, und noch im selben Herbst brannte sie durch mit einem tunesischen Obsthändler aus Marseille. –
Aus all diesen Vorkommnissen zog Jonathan Noel den Schluß, daß auf die Menschen kein Verlaß sei und daß man nur in Frieden leben könne, wenn man sie sich vom Leibe hielt. Und weil er nun auch noch zum Gespött des Dorfes geworden war, was ihn nicht wegen des Gespötts an sich störte, sondern wegen der öffentlichen Aufmerksamkeit, die er dadurch erregte, traf er zum ersten Mal in seinem Leben selbst eine Entscheidung: Er ging zum Crédit Agricole, hob seine Ersparnisse ab, packte den Koffer und fuhr nach Paris.“

 

 
Patrick Süskind (Ambach, 26 maart 1949)

 

De Engelse dichter Alfred Edward Housman werd geboren op 26 maart 1859 in Fockbury, Worcestershire. Zie ook alle tags voor A. E. Housman op dit blog.

 

‘Tis five years since, `An end,’ said I

‘Tis five years since, `An end,’ said I;
`I’ll march no further, time to die.
All’s lost; no worse has heaven to give.’
Worse has it given, and yet I live.

I shall not die to-day, no fear:
I shall live yet for many a year,
And see worse ills and worse again,
And die of age and not of pain.

When God would rear from earth aloof
The blue height of the hollow roof,
He sought him pillars sure and strong,
And ere he found them sought them long.

The stark steel splintered from the thrust,
The basalt mountain sprang to dust,
The blazing pier of diamond flawed
In shards of rainbow all abroad.

What found he, that the heavens stand fast?
What pillar proven firm at last
Bears up so light that world-seen span?
The heart of man, the heart of man.

 

Good creatures, do you love your lives

Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a knife like other knives,
That cost me eighteen pence.

I need but stick it in my heart
And down will come the sky,
And earth’s foundations will depart
And all you folk will die.

 

 
A. E. Housman (26 maart 1859 – 30 april 1936)
Cover

 

De Italiaanse, Duitstalige, dichteres en schrijfster Bettina Galvagni werd geboren op 26 maart 1976 in Neumarkt, Zuid-Tirol. Zie ook alle tags voor Bettina Galvagni op dit blog.

Uit: Guinevere in Zürich

„Und im Winter eben, da spielt Paris Venedig. Alle die Vögel des Zürichbergs, die Eichhörnchen auf der großen Buche vor dem Haus, und die vielen gefräßigen aristokratischen Katzen, sie alle erinnerten mich nur an meine sanfte, zärtliche moumoutte in Paris. Am Samstag begleitete ich meine Tante immer zum Einkaufen. Mit ihrem großen roten Auto fuhren wir von einem Supermarkt zum nächsten. Nie vorher hatte ich jemanden gesehen, der so aufmerksam durch einen Supermarkt ging wie meine Tante. Ich fing an, mich für bestimmte Artikel zu begeistern, am meisten liebte ich die verschiedenen Reisezahnbürsten und die dazugehörigen bunten Zahnpasten. Diese kleinen subtilen Gegenstände ließen sofort Koffer und Flughäfen vor meinen Augen entstehen. Ich wußte noch nicht, daß Rachel Zilberstein nach Israel gegangen war, ich wußte nicht, daß sie in der Zeit nahezu alle zwei Wochen von Paris nach Tel Aviv und zurück flog, daß sie alle zwei Wochen auf dem Charles-de-Gaulle-Flughafen und in Ashdod war, in einem Kostüm aus einem modernen Stoff, der nicht knittert, mit einer großen Schauspielerinnen-Sonnenbrille, zweifarbigen Chanel-Schuhen und so viel rotem Lippenstift, als ob sie gleich auf die Bühne gerufen würde, um eine exaltierte Judith zu spielen. Meine Tante pflegte für die ganze Woche einzukaufen, vor allem große Mengen an Gemüse. Ihre Leidenschaft war Mangold. Sie konnte ihn in jeder Variante zubereiten, und da ich ihn ebenfalls liebte, aß ich oft tagelang Mangoldreis,
Mangoldsuppe und Mangoldgemüse. Ich aß so viel davon, daß mir einmal, an einem Abend, so schlecht davon wurde, daß ich den Mangold verfluchte und später wieder um Verzeihung bat. Bei unseren langen Aufenthalten in den Supermärkten war die Tante sehr nett. Sie fragte mich jedesmal, ob ich eine besondere Schokolade, eine neue Frucht oder sonst etwas haben möchte. Und meistens fing sie mit jemandem zu reden an, oft geriet sie mit einer der Angestellten in einen Streit, und manchmal ließ sie ihre Brieftasche liegen (mein Onkel hatte sie ihr geschenkt, sie besaß ein Schachbrettmuster, genauso wie ihre Tasche; nachdem sie sie etwa zehnmal verloren und wiederbekommen und unzählige Ausflüge zu Fundbüros, Polizei und ähnlichem hinter sich hatte – ich begleitete sie natürlich immer -, hatte sie sie endgültig verloren), manchmal verlor sie ihren Ring, weil er sich am Morgen durch die Seife oder später durch das Abspülmittel leicht gelöst hatte undsoweiter. Manchmal wurde ihr auch schwindelig, und sie setzte sich hin und ich holte für sie Wasser aus einem Plastikbehälter. Dann fuhren wir mit dem großen roten Auto zurück. Sie fragte mich nach Paris, ob ich es vermißte, und dann begann sie meine Haarlocken auseinanderzuzupfen.“

 

 
Bettina Galvagni (Neumarkt, 26 maart 1976)
Neumarkt in Zuid-Tirol

 

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Erica Jong werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1942. Zie ook alle tags voor Erica Jong op dit blog.

Uit: Fear of Dying

“A time of new beginnings (Yom Kippur), starting over (Rosh Hashanah), and laying in acorns against a barren winter (Succoth). When I placed the ad, I had thought of myself as a sophisticate coolly interviewing lovers. But now I was suddenly overcome with panic. I began fantasizing about what sort of creeps, losers, retreads, extortionists, and homicidal maniacs such an ad would attract — and then I got so busy with calls from my ailing parents and pregnant daughter that I forgot all about it.
A few minutes went by. Then suddenly the responses poured out of the Internet like coins out of a slot machine. I was almost afraid to look. After a couple of beats, I couldn’t resist. It was like hoping I had won the lottery. The first response showed a scanned Polaroid of an erect penis — a tawny uncircumcised specimen with a drop of dew winking at the tip. Under the photo, on the white border, was scrawled: “Without Viagra.” The accompanying e- mail was concise:
I like your style. Have always risen for assertive women. Send nude shot and measurements.
The next one began like this:
Dear Seeker,
Sometimes we think it’s carnality we want when actually we long for Jesus. We discover that if we open our hearts and let Him in, all sorts of satisfaction undreamt of can be ours. Perhaps you think you are seeking Eros, but Thanatos is what you really seek. In Jesus, there is eternal life.
He is the lover who never disappoints, the friend who is loyal forever. It would be an honor to meet and counsel you …
A telephone number was proffered: 1-800- JESUS-4U. “

 

 
Erica Jong (New York, 26 maart 1942)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 26e maart ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2017 deel 2.

Tennessee Williams, Gregory Corso, Hwang Sun-won, Martin McDonagh, Robert Frost, Patrick Süskind, A. E. Housman, Bettina Galvagni, Erica Jong

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

 

We have not long to love

We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day….

 

The Soft City

I
Eastward the city with scarcely even a murmur
turns in the soft dusk,
the lights of it blur,
the delicate spires are unequal
as though the emollient dusk had begun to dissolve them…

And the soft air-breathers,
their soft bosoms rising and falling as ferns under water
responding to some impalpably soft pressure,
turn with the city, too.

The petals of tenderness in them,
their tentative ways of feeling, not quite reaching out
but ever so gently half reaching out and withdrawing,

withdrawing to where their feminine star is withdrawing,
the planet that turns with them,
faithfully always and softly…

 

 
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Cover biografie

Lees verder “Tennessee Williams, Gregory Corso, Hwang Sun-won, Martin McDonagh, Robert Frost, Patrick Süskind, A. E. Housman, Bettina Galvagni, Erica Jong”

Tennessee Williams, Gregory Corso, Hwang Sun-won, Martin McDonagh, Robert Frost, Patrick Süskind

 De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

Uit: A Streetcar Named Desire

“STELLA : I don’t want to hear any more!
STANLEY: She’s not going back to teach school! In fact I am willing to bet you that she never had no idea of returning to Laurel! She didn’t resign temporarily from the high school because of her nerves! No, siree, Bob! She didn’t. They kicked her out of that high school before the spring term ended—and I hate to tell you the reason that step was taken! A seventeen-year-old boy—she’d gotten mixed up with!
BLANCHE: “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, Just as phony as it can be—”
[In the bathroom the water goes on loud; little breath-less cries and peals of laughter are heard as if a child were frolicking in the tub.]
STELLA : This is making me—sick!
STANLEY: The boy’s dad learned about it and got in touch with the high school superintendent. Boy, oh, boy, I’d like to have been in that office when Dame Blanche was called on the carpet! I’d like to have seen her trying to squirm out of that one! But they had her on the hook good and proper that time and she knew that the jig was all up! They told her she better move on to some fresh territory. Yep, it was practickly a town ordinance passed against her! [The bathroom door is opened and Blanche thrusts her head out, holding a towel about her hair.]
BLANCHE: Stella!
STELLA [faintly]: Yes, Blanche?
BLANCHE: Give me another bath-towel to dry my hair with. I’ve just washed it.”

 

 
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Scene uit de gelijknamige tv-film uit 1984 met o.a.Treat Williams als Stanley Kowalski

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De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

Uit: A Streetcar Named Desire

“STANLEY: Sure, I can see how you would be upset by this. She pulled the wool over your
eyes as much as Mitch’s!
STELLA: It’s pure invention! There’s not a word of truth in it and if I were a man and this
creature had dared to
invent such things in my presence —
BLANCHE [singing] :“Without your love, It’s a honky-tonk parade! Without your love, It’s a
melody played, In a penny arcade…”
STANLEY: Honey, I told you I thoroughly checked on these stories! Now wait till I finish. The trouble with Dame Blanche was that she couldn’t put on her act any more in Laurel! They got wised up after two or three dates with her and then they quit, and she goes on to another, the same old line, same old act, same old hooey! But the town was too small for this to go on forever! And as time went by she became a town character. Regarded as not just different but downright loco — nuts.
[Stella draws back.]
And for the last year or two she has been washed up like poison. That’s why she’s here this
summer, visiting royalty, putting on all this act — because she’s practically told by the mayor to get out of town! Yes, did you know there was an army camp near Laurel and your sister’s was one of the places called “Out-of-Bounds”?
BLANCHE: “It’s only a paper moon. Just as phony as it can be — But it wouldn’t be make-believe, If you believed in me!”
STANLEY: Well, so much for her being such a refined and particular type of girl. Which brings us to Lie Number Two.“

 

 
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Marlon Brando als Stanley Kowalski in de film uit 1951

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De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

Uit: A Streetcar Named Desire

« STELLA: Now please tell me quietly what you think you’ve found out about my sister.
STANLEY: Lie Number One: All this squeamishness she puts on! You should just know the line she’s been feeding to Mitch — He thought she had never been more than kissed by a fellow! But Sister Blanche is no lily! Ha-ha! Some lily she is!
STELLA: What have you heard and who from?
STANLEY: Our supply-man down at the plant has been going through Laurel for years and he knows all about her and everybody else in the town of Laurel knows all about her. She is as famous in Laurel as if she was the President of the United States, only she is not respected by any party! This supply-man stops at a hotel called the Flamingo.
BLANCHE [singing blithely]: “Say, it’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea — But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!”
STELLA: What about the — Flamingo?
STANLEY: She stayed there, too.
STELLA: My sister lived at Belle Reve.
STANLEY: This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily white fingers! She moved to the Flamingo! A second class hotel which has the advantage of not interfering in the private social life of the personalities there! The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings-on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche! In fact they were so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to turn in her roomkey — for permanently! This happened a couple of weeks before she showed here.
BLANCHE [singing]: “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world. Just as phony as it can be — But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me!”
STELLA: What – contemptible – lies.

 

 
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Cover dvd

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De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus, Mississippi, op 26 maart 1911. Zie ook alle tags voor Tennessee Williams op dit blog.

Uit: Something Cloudy, Something Clear

“KIP. [extending his hand through the window] Oh. Yes, we met last night. Do you have any drinking water in here?
AUGUST. A bottle of tepid soda.
KIP. Fine. Anything wet but not salty.
CLARE. [to Kip] I’m about to deliver a lecture to him on making concessions in art.
KIP. For or against?
CLARE. I think any kind of artist — a painter like Van Gogh, a dancer like Nijinsky –
AUGUST. Both of them went mad.
CLARE. But others didn’t, refused to make concessions to bad taste and yet managed survival without losing their minds. That’s purity. You’ve got to respect it or not.

 

 
Kayal Khanna als Kip in een uitvoering in het Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco, 2013

 

AUGUST. I do, I will. But it will be years before I’ve mastered the craft of my work. I’ll try to survive the time till then.
CLARE. You’re young and strong and healthy. I don’t know your talent, but if you do and it’s good — forget concessions.
AUGUST. You have a rather precocious — knowledge of such things.
CLARE. Had to have that, exigency of –
AUGUST. — Survival?
CLARE. Had to have that early.
AUGUST. Why so early?
CLARE. My family in Newport, Rhode Island, were shocked by my lack of the conventions they valued too much.
KIP. Wow! I’ll continue my exercises. [He returns to the platform. Over the following he begins a series of slow, lyrical warmup exercises which will blend gracefully, later, into the pavane]”.

 

 
Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)
Portret door Juan Fernando Bastos, 2005

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De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.

 

To a downfallen rose

When I laid aside the verses of Mimnermus,
I lived a life of canned heat and raw hands,
alone, not far from my body did I wander,
walked with a hope of a sudden dreamy forest of gold.
O rose, downfallen, bend your huge vegetic back;
eye down the imposter sun…in winter dream
sulk your rosefamed head into the bile of golden giant,
ah, rose, augment the rose further still!
whence upon that self-created dive in Eden
you blossomed where the Watchmaker of Nothingness
lulled,
your birth did cause bits of smashed night to pop,
causing my dreamy forest to unfold.
Yes, and the Watchmaker, his wheely-flesh
and jewelled-bones spoiled as he awoke,
and in the face of your Somethingness, he fled
waving oblivious monks in his unwinded hands.
The sun cannot see upheaved spatics, the tennis of Venus
and the court of Mars sing the big lie of the sun,
ah, faraway ball of fur, sponge up the elements;
make clear the trees and the mountains of the earth,
arise and turn away from the vast fixedness.

Rose! Rose! my tinhorneared rose!
Rose is my visionic eyehand of all Mysticdom
Rose is my wise chair of bombed houses
Rose is my patient electric eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes,
Rose is my festive jowl,
Dali Lama Grand Vicar Glorious Caesar rose!

When I hear the rose scream
I gather all the failure experiments of an anatomical empire
and, with some chemical dream, discover
the hateful law of the earth and sun, and the screaming
rose between.

 

Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)

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De Amerikaanse dichter Gregory Corso werd geboren in New York op 26 maart 1930. Zie ook alle tags voor Gregory Corso op dit blog.

 

1959

Uncomprising year—I see no meaning to life.
Though this abled self is here nonetheless,
either in trade gold or grammaticness,
I drop the wheelwright’s simple principle—
Why weave the garland? Why ring the bell?

Penurious butchery these notoriously human years,
these confident births these lucid deaths these years.
Dream’s flesh blood reals down life’s mystery—
there is no mystery.
Cold history knows no dynastic Atlantis.
The habitual myth has an eagerness to quit.

No meaning to life can be found in this holy language
nor beyond the lyrical fabricator’s inescapable theme
be found the loathed find—there is nothing to find.

Multitudinous deathplot! O this poor synod—
Hopers and seekers paroling meaning to meaning,
annexing what might be meaningful, what might be meaningless.

Repeated nightmare, lachrymae lachrymae—
a fire behind a grotto, a thick fog, shredded masts,
the nets heaved—and the indescribable monster netted.
Who was it told that red flesh hose be still?
For one with smooth hands did with pincers
snip the snout—It died like a yawn.
And when the liver sack was yanked
I could not follow it to the pan.

I could not follow it to the pan—
I woke to the reality of cars; Oh
the dreadful privilege of that vision!
Not one antique faction remained;

Egypt, Rome, Greece,
and all such pedigree dreams fled.
Cars are real! Eternity is done.
The threat of Nothingness renews.
I touch the untouched.
I rank the rose militant.
Deny, I deny the tastes and habits of the age.
I am its punk debauche …. A fierce lampoon
seeking to inherit what is necessary to forfeit.

Lies! Lies! Lies! I lie, you lie, we all lie!
There is no us, there is no world, there is no universe,
there is no life, no death, no nothing—all is meaningless,
and this too is a lie—O damned 1959!
Must I dry my inspiration in this sad concept?
Delineate my entire stratagem?
Must I settle into phantomness
and not say I understand things better than God?

 

Gregory Corso (26 maart 1930 – 17 januari 2001)
Hier met Allen Ginsberg (links)

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100 Jaar Tennessee Williams, Hwang Sun-won, Martin McDonagh, Gregory Corso, Bettina Galvagni, Hai Zi

100 Jaar Tennessee Williams

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Tennessee Williams (eigenlijk Thomas Lanier Williams) werd geboren in Columbus (Mississippi op 26 maart 1911. Dat is vandaag precies 100 jaar geleden. Zie ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2007 en ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2008 en ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2009 en ook mijn blog van 26 maart 2010.

 

Uit: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

 

„BRICK: Why d’ya call Gooper’s kiddies no-neck monsters?

MARGARET: Because they’ve got no necks! Isn’t that a good enough reason?

BRICK: Don’t they have any necks?

MARGARET: None visible. Their fat little heads are set on their fat little bodies without a bit of connection.

BRICK: That’s too bad.

MARGARET: Yes, it’s too bad because you can’t wring their necks if they’ve got no necks to wring! Isn’t that right, honey?

[She steps out of her dress, stands in a slip of ivory satin and lace.]

Yep, they’re no-neck monsters, all no-neck people are monsters …

[Children shriek downstairs.]

Hear them? Hear them screaming? I don’t know where their voice boxes are located since they don’t have necks. I tell you I got so nervous at that table tonight I thought I would throw back my head and utter a scream you could hear across the Arkansas border an’ parts of Louisiana an’ Tennessee. I said to your charming sister-in-law, Mae, honey, couldn’t you feed those precious little things at a separate table with an oilcloth cover? They make such a mess an’ the lace cloth looks so pretty! She made enormous eyes at me and said, “Ohhh, noooooo! On Big Daddy’s birthday? Why, he would never forgive me!” Well, I want you to know, Big Daddy hadn’t been at the table two minutes with those five no-neck monsters slobbering and drooling over their food before he threw down his fork an’ shouted, “Fo’ God’s sake, Gooper, why don’t you put them pigs at a trough in th’ kitchen?”-Well, I swear, I simply could have di-ieed!

 

 

Paul Newman en Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958).

 

 

Think of it, Brick, they’ve got five of them and number six is coming. They’ve brought the whole bunch down here like animals to display at a county fair. Why, they have those children doin’ tricks all the time! “Junior, show Big Daddy how you do this, show Big Daddy how you do that, say your little piece fo’ Big Daddy, Sister. Show your dimples, Sugar. Brother, show Big Daddy how you stand on your head!”-It goes on all the time, along with constant little remarks and innuendos about the fact that you and I have not produced any children, are totally childless and therefore totally useless! -Of course it’s comical but it’s also disgusting since it’s so obvious what they’re up to!

BRICK [without interest]: What are they up to, Maggie?“

 

 

Tennessee Williams (26 maart 1911 – 25 februari 1983)

 

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