Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rosario Castellanos, Alain Grandbois, Naim Frashëri, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803. Zie ook alle tags voor Ralph Waldo Emerson op dit blog.

Fate

Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell’s measure or degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse.
He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,
With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harbored not his peer:
Obeying time, the last to own
The Genius from its cloudy throne.
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.

 

The Bell

I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.

Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.

To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder’s fires.

And soon thy music, sad death-bell,
Shall lift its notes once more,
And mix my requiem with the wind
That sweeps my native shore.

 
Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 mei 1803 – 27 april 1882)
Portret door David Scott, 1848

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rosario Castellanos, Alain Grandbois, Naim Frashëri, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803. Zie ook alle tags voor Ralph Waldo Emerson op dit blog.

Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

 

Friendship

A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,-
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness had taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.

 
Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 mei 1803 – 27 april 1882)
Portret door Arthur Wardle, z.j.

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Egyd Gstättner, Eve Ensler, Friedrich Dieckmann, Claire Castillon, Raymond Carver, Jamaica Kincaid

De Oostenrijkse schrijver en essayist Egyd Gstättner werd geboren op 25 mei 1962 in Klagenfurt. Zie ook alle tags voor Egyd Gstättner op dit blog.

 

Uit: Absturz aus dem Himmel

 

„Eigentlich wollte ich – literarisch gerade wieder einmal frei geworden, was ein nervlich strapaziöser und auf Dauer wenigstens mir unausstehlicher Zustand ist – die Geschichte eines mündigen Staatsbürgers schreiben, der nach einem langen Wahlkampf in der Wahlzelle plötzlich von einer akuten Unentschiedenheit gepackt wird.
Denn er hält alle Parolen und Versprechungen und Gesichter aller Kandidaten aller Parteien gegeneinander und weiß partout nicht, in welchen Kreis er sein Kreuz machen könnte: eine Prosa übrigens, die deutliche autobiografische Züge enthalten soll; immerhin sagt eine meiner wenigen Literaturtheorien, dass meine Existenz von Haus aus derart dramatisch ist, dass ich keine andere benötige und nichts erfinden muss. Ich muss nur Ordnung schaffen.
Ich kann von meinem Leben leben. Weil er trotz der dringlichen Aufforderungen der Wahlhelfer der Parteien die Wahlzelle stundenlang nicht wieder verlässt mit der Begründung, eine solche Wahl sei eine heikle Angelegenheit und die gründlichste und genaueste Überlegung daher ein unerlässlicher Sachzwang, ungeachtet des sicher stimmigen Einwands, dass zunehmende Gründlichkeit und Genauigkeit dieser Überlegung eine daran anschließende Entscheidung für einen der Spitzenkandidaten, denen von der Meinungsforschung seriöse Gewinnchancen zugebilligt werden, keineswegs vereinfache, sondern im Gegenteil erschwere und verunmögliche, wird bald nicht nur die Warteschlange außerhalb der Wahlzelle, sondern auch das Fernsehen und damit das gesamte Bundesgebiet auf den Wähler aufmerksam, denn der Fernsehmoderator muss der am Höhepunkt der Hochspannung befindlichen Bevölkerung eingestehen, dass die für siebzehn Uhr angekündigte Hochrechnung, die das für das politische Leben der nächsten Jahre oder gar Jahrzehnte so richtungweisende und bedeutsame und mit einem Wort entscheidende Endergebnis der Wahlen erfahrungsgemäß mit verblüffender Exaktheit vorwegnimmt, nicht ausgestrahlt werden könne, obwohl sie natürlich bereits vorliege, aber erst veröffentlicht werden dürfe, sobald das letzte Wahllokal geschlossen habe.“

 

 

Egyd Gstättner (Klagenfurt, 25 mei 1962)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rosario Castellanos, Alain Grandbois, Naim Frashëri, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803. Zie ook alle tags voor Ralph Waldo Emerson op dit blog.

My Garden

If I could put my woods in song
And tell what’s there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,–
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring’s faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,–
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nature’s lawful web,
They heed not moon or solar tide,–
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god,–none did refuse;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable,
As if one spake to another,
In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
And what the whispering grasses smother.

Æolian harps in the pine
Ring with the song of the Fates;
Infant Bacchus in the vine,–
Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the wood-bell’s peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning’s prime,
Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man’s ear
Seldom in this low life’s round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day;
If who can read them comes at last
He will spell in the sculpture,’Stay.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 mei 1803 – 27 april 1882)

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Raymond Carver, John Gregory Dunne, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rosario Castellanos, Alain Grandbois, Naim Frashëri

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Raymond Carver werd geboren op 25 mei 1938 in Port Angeles. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009 en ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2010

 

Happiness

 

So early it’s still almost dark out.

I’m near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

 

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

 

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

 

I think if they could, they would take

each other’s arm.

It’s early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

 

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

 

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn’t enter into this.

 

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.

 

 

 

Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year

 

October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen

I study my father’s embarrassed young man’s face.

Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string

of spiny yellow perch, in the other

a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.

 

In jeans and denim shirt, he leans

against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.

He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,

Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.

All his life my father wanted to be bold.

 

But the eyes give him away, and the hands

that limply offer the string of dead perch

and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,

yet how can I say thank you, I who can’t hold my liquor either,

and don’t even know the places to fish?

 

 
Raymond Carver (25 mei 1938 – 2 augustus 1988)

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Raymond Carver, Rosario Castellanos, John Gregory Dunne, Max von der Grün, Alain Grandbois, Naim Frashëri, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Ralph Waldo Emerson

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Raymond Carver werd geboren op 25 mei 1938 in Port Angeles. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

Drinking While Driving

 

It’s August and I have not

Read a book in six months

except something called The Retreat from Moscow

by Caulaincourt

Nevertheless, I am happy

Riding in a car with my brother

and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.

We do not have any place in mind to go,

we are just driving.

If I closed my eyes for a minute

I would be lost, yet

I could gladly lie down and sleep forever

beside this road

My brother nudges me.

Any minute now, something will happen.

 

 

What The Doctor Said

 

He said it doesn’t look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I’m real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn’t catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who’d just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

 

Raymond-Carver

Raymond Carver (25 mei 1938 – 2 augustus 1988)

 

De Mexicaanse dichteres en schrijfster Rosario Castellanos werd geboren in Mexico-stad op 25 mei 1925. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

De andere

Waarom namen van goden uitspreken, sterren
van schuim uit een onzichtbare oceaan,
stuifmeel van de verste tuinen,
als het leven ons pijn doet, als elke dag die komt
ons het hart verscheurt, als elke nacht ineengekrompen,
vermoord neervalt,
als het lijden van iemand, van een mens ons onbekend
maar straks aanwezig en slachtoffer,
de vijand en de liefde en alles dat ons ontbreekt
om volmaakt te zijn ons pijn doen?
Zeg nooit dat de duisternis
niet met één slok kan verslinden het geluk.
Kijk om je heen: er is de andere, er is altijd de andere.
Wat hij ademt is wat je verstikt,
wat hij eet is jouw honger.
Hij sterft met de zuiverste helft van jouw dood.

Vertaald door Henri Thijs

 

 

Chess

 

Because we were friends and sometimes loved each other,

perhaps to add one more tie

to the many that already bound us,

we decided to play games of the mind.

 

We set up a board between us:

equally divided into pieces, values,

and possible moves.

We learned the rules, we swore to respect them,

and the match began.

 

We’ve been sitting here for centuries, meditating

ferociously

how to deal the one last blow that will finally

annihilate the other one forever.

 

castellanos

Rosario Castellanos (25 mei 1925 – 7 augustus 1974)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver en journalist John Gregory Dunne werd geboren op 25 mei 1932 in West Hartford, Connecticut. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

Uit: Nothing Lost

 

The University of South Midland, whose main campus is located in Cap City, has never had a Nobel laureate, but its football team has been the national champion three times in the last eight years, and its coach, Dr. John Strong, has been on the cover of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News, and Sports Illustrated (three times, twice as he was doused with Gatorade by his team and assistant coaches after a victory); the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal has even floated his name as a future Republican vice-presidential candidate because of his devotion both to winning and to American ideals. All the university sports teams are named the Rhinos, although there is no palaeontological evidence that herds of rhinoceroses ever roamed the empty vistas of the Great Plains.
I teach a night school course in criminal law at Osceola County Community College in Cap City, and at the first class meeting each semester I tell my students that when I open the Kiowa Times-Ledger and the Capital City Herald every morning, I turn first to the obituary page. In an obit, I say, the spaces between the lines tell all. What is omitted is often more interesting than what is said. Example, from yesterday’s Herald, the deceased, a forty-nine-year-old professor of agronomy at the university, unknown to me, killed by a hit-and-run driver in a Kmart parking lot; said driver, just turned fifteen and without a license, apprehended two blocks from the accident site after blindsiding a brand-new Volvo SUV on a pre-purchase trial spin: “He is survived by his second wife, from whom he was recently divorced, and by a stepson from his first marriage.” Think of the moral and sexual misdemeanors woven into that simple sentence, the mosaic of small, mean betrayals. The mind has difficulty entertaining all the agronomist’s sins and discontents, mortal and venial, the permutations and possibilities of discarded and discarding spouses. And that is before we consider the teenage jerkoff who thought the Kmart parking lot was the Talledega Superspeedway.“

 

JohnGregoryDunneJDidi

John Gregory Dunne (25 mei 1932 – 30 december 2003)
Hier met zijn vrouw, de schrijfster Joan Didion

 

De Duitse schrijver Max von der Grün werd geboren op 25 mei 1926 in Bayreuth. Zie ook mijn
blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

Uit: Flächenbrand

 

„Frank hatte zwei Mal schnell hintereinander geschossen.
Er schoss in dem Augenblick, als wir uns einig geworden waren, nicht zu schießen. Ich stand wie gelähmt, als die zwei dumpfen Schläge durch den Wald blafften; dann rannte ich einfach fort, ohne mich nach Frank umzusehen.
Nur fort, versinken, unsichtbar machen oder einfach in Luft auflösen, und beim Laufen hörte ich die beiden Schüs­se tausendfach an meine Ohren trommeln.
Als ich Franks Wagen erreichte, den er in einer Feldeinfahrt geparkt hatte, schloss er gerade den Wagen auf.
Bist du geflogen?, fragte ich keuchend.
Mir war, als dauerte es Stunden, bis das Auto ansprang und Frank losfuhr, ich hatte den Eindruck, als bewegte er sich im Zeitlupentempo auf der schmalen Straße, die von Hagen nach Dortmund von der Ruhr bergauf führt. Fahr doch schneller!, schrie ich. Fahr! Fahr!“

 

maxvondergruen1

Max von der Grün (25 mei 1926 – 7 april 2005)

 

De Canadese dichter en schrijver Alain Grandbois werd geboren op 25 mei 1900 in Saint-Casimir, Québec. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

Libération

 

Chacun sans issue

Très bien muré

Dans son cachot dévorant

Le temps glisse à reculons

Mon fer m’a forgé

 

Nuls maillons de chaînes

Ne peuvent me retenir

Je suis plus dur

Que tout l’acier du monde

Je ne veux plus rien entendre

 

Je connais ces mots

Gonflés comme des fruits mûrs

Ah dans le brouillard

Ces îles fantômales

Je refuse leur murmure

 

Je refuse l’émouvante évasion

D’une aube libératrice

Avec le ciel de ses étoiles

Leurs troupes de fraîcheur

Dispensant les délices

 

Je refuse l’empreinte

De son pas sur la plage

Le sable léger

Marquant le signe encore

Aux cadrans solennels

 

Îles frontées de rubis

Îles belles perdues

Ô lumineux sarcophages

Vos purs doigts repliés

Me trouvent insaisissable

 

Les grands vertiges de la mer

Souffraient les souffles incantatoires

Quels éblouissants coquillages

Pour faire oublier la noyade

De ce qui restait de nos morts

 

Nous aurions pu tenter alors

La calme angoisse de la nuit

Le cristal de la solitude

L’innocence de l’immobilité

Le secret refuge des miroirs noirs

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La dévastation de l’univers

Soudain sur nous répandue

La sourde confession

Des mornes mélancolies

Glissaient au bleu des ravisseurs

 

Plus loin que l’apparat des mondes

Au delà des abîmes prématurés

Au delà des tendres prairies vertes

Au delà du plus sûr piège

De l’instant du jeu brisé

 

Les prédestinations défendues

La voix de l’espoir avec appel

Un sang rouge comme apprivoisé

Un fallacieux destin de bonheur

Les liens de la mer et de la joie

 

Cette prison mortelle

Ô belle aux yeux morts

Je tente en veillant

De libérer ta mort

De libérer ma mort

 

Grandbois

Alain Grandbois (25 mei 1900 – 18 maart 1975)

 

De Albanese dichter en schrijver Naim Frashëri werd geboren op 25 mei 1846 in Frashër. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

The Flute

 

Listen to the flute a-speaking,
Tell the tale of wretched exile,
Weeping for this world of sorrow
Using words of truth to spin it.

 

Since the day they seized and took me
From my friends and my companions,
Men and women have been weeping
At the echo of my sobbing.

 

I have rent my breast from beating,
Gaping holes have made within it,
How I’ve wept and have lamented,
Thousand sighs my heart has rendered.

 

I’m a friend and blithe companion
Both of this world’s happy people
And of all folk sad, embittered,
With them do I make alliance.

 

Whate’er be the situation,
I can weep and mourn in longing,
At any time and any place will
My heart sigh and be a-moaning.

 

All the world does listen to me,
Sees though only my appearance,
Of my wishes they know nothing,
Nor the fire that burns within me.

 

People come and gather ‘round me
When I weep and tell of longing,
Yet they do not know my secret,
Thus I find no consolation.

 

Those abandoned, hearts forsaken,
Of the flute become companions,
Some, its mellow scales a-hearing,
Lose their minds, their wits completely.

 

Human falsehood and illusion!
The flute’s voice is not mere wind, it
Has the fire of love within it
When that lowly reed is fingered.

 

When it plays, the heavens brighten,
When it plays, do hearts take courage,
When it plays, the summer blossoms,
When it plays, the soul’s ecstatic.

 

To the rose it lends its fragrance,
And to beauty adds an aura,
Gives the nightingale its music,
Charm bestows upon the cosmos.

 

Of that fire to the heavens
Rising, flickering and flaming,
Does it make the sun and stars which
God within his hands is holding.

 

From that fire, true God Almighty
All the firmament he fashioned,
Sent the spark of life, creating
Humankind after his likeness.

 

Fire, oh blessed fire a-blazing,
I with you have been united,
Thus am purified and blended.
Never leave me, my beloved!

 

 

 

Vertaald door Robert Elsie

 

NAIM_FRASHERI

Naim Frashëri (25 mei 1846 – 20 oktober 1900)

 

De Britse schrijver, criticus en politicus Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton werd geboren in Londen op 25 mei 1803. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

Uit: Zanoni

 

„In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work,one who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I have sought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and serenely dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of his imagination,in looking round for some such man, my thoughts rested upon you. Afar from our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and the sordid strife which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,in your Roman Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and in the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth has been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: a fame unsullied by one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worst perils that beset the artist in our time and land,the debasing tendencies of commerce, and the angry rivalries of competition. You have not wrought your marble for the market,you have not been tempted, by the praises which our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration and distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in the dead,no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the divine priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to increase her worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you have inherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors,yours his delicacy, not his affectation.”

 

Bulwer

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (25 mei 1803 – 18 januari 1873)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

Uit: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Introductie door Maty Oliver)

 

The distinction and particular value of anything, or any person, inevitably must alter according to the time and place from which we take our view. In any new discussion of Emerson, these two weights are upon us. By time, of course, I mean our entrance into the twenty-first century; it is almost two hundred years since Emerson’s birth in Boston. By place, I mean his delivery from the town of Concord, and his corporeal existence anywhere. Now he is only within the wider, immeasurable world of our thoughts. He lives nowhere but on the page, and in the attentive mind that leans above that page.
This has some advantage for us, for he is now the Emerson of our choice: he is the man of his own time–his own history–or he is one of the mentors of ours. Each of these possibilities has its attractions, for the man alive was unbelievably sweet and, for all his devotion to reason, wondrously spontaneous. Yet as time’s passage has broken him free of all mortal events, we begin to know him more clearly for the labors of his life: the life of his mind. Surely he was looking for something that would abide beyond the Tuesday or the Saturday, beyond even his first powerful or cautionary or lovely effect.“

 

ralph-waldo-emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 mei 1803 – 27 april 1882)

 

Raymond Carver, John Gregory Dunne, Rosario Castellanos, Max von der Grün, Alain Grandbois, Naim Frashëri, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Ralph Waldo Emerson

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Raymond Carver werd geboren op 25 mei 1938 in Port Angeles. Carver debuteerde in 1961 met zijn verhaal ‘The Furious Seasons’. De korte verhalen zijn in verschillende tijdschriften gepubliceerd en later gebundeld. De eerste bundel ‘Furious Seasons’ verscheen in 1977. Andere bundels zijn ‘Those Days’ (1986), ‘Early Writings by Raymond Carver’ (1987), ‘Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories’ (1988), ‘Elephant and Other Stories’ (1988) en ‘Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose’ (2001). Zijn eerste dichtbundel ‘Near Klamath’ verscheen in 1968. Gebundeld: ‘In a Marine Light: Selected Poems’ (1987) en ‘A New Path to the Waterfall’ (1989).  Carver ontving verschillende prijzen waaronder de National Book Award voor ‘Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?’ (1977) en de National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for fiction in 1980. Van 1980 tot 1983 was Carver universitair docent Engels.

 

 

An Afternoon

 

As he writes, without looking at the sea,

he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.

The tide is going out across the shingle.

But it isn’t that. No,

it’s because at that moment she chooses

to walk into the room without any clothes on.

Drowsy, not even sure where she is

for a moment. She waves the hair from her forehead.

Sits on the toilet with her eyes closed,

head down. Legs sprawled. He sees her

through the doorway. Maybe

she’s remembering what happened that morning.

For after a time, she opens one eye and looks at him.

And sweetly smiles.

 

 

 

The Best Time Of The Day

 

Cool summer nights.

Windows open.

Lamps burning.

Fruit in the bowl.

And your head on my shoulder.

These the happiest moments in the day.

 

Next to the early morning hours,

of course. And the time

just before lunch.

And the afternoon, and

early evening hours.

But I do love

 

these summer nights.

Even more, I think,

than those other times.

The work finished for the day.

And no one who can reach us now.

Or ever.

 

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Raymond Carver (25 mei 1938 – 2 augustus 1988)

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver en journalist John Gregory Dunne werd geboren op 25 mei 1932 in West Hartford, Connecticut. In 1954 studeerde Dunne af aan Princeton. Een aantal boeken (zoals bijvoorbeeld het draaiboek voor A Star Is Born) schreef hij samen met zijn vrouw Joan Didion, zelf ook schrijfster. Hij debuteerde in 1967 met Delano. The Story of the California Grape Strike.

 

Uit: Nothing Lost

 

„That is the end of the story.

Or almost the end.

I’m not sure I’m the one who should be telling it, but if I don’t, nobody will, so what the hell.

We live in a litigious time, and as I do not wish to be the focus of any litigation, I’ve located the major events of what follows in a state I call South Midland. By its name you can intuit a couple of things. Midland suggests the middle of the country, that part grandiosely identified as the Great Plains. South Midland suggests that there is a North Midland, as indeed there is. North Midlanders proudly claim to have the largest Paul Bunyan statue in the world, and perhaps they do, since to the best of my knowledge there are no other claimants. With that highly developed sense of humor we all recognize as indigenous to the Great Plains, South Midlanders say that the best thing in North Midland is Interstate 90 leading to South Midland. People in North Midland often group the two states together as Midlandia, but people in South Midland never do.

The biggest city in South Midland is Kiowa, which of course is Indian or, as we now say, Native American. When traveling out of state, Kiowans often refer to Kiowa as the Chicago of the north-central states. I have never heard a Chicagoan refer to his home as the Kiowa of the Midwest. Our state capital is called, with the imagination we also know as indigenous to the Great Plains, Capital City, usually shortened to Cap City.“

 

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John Gregory Dunne (25 mei 1932 – 30 december 2003)

 

De Mexicaanse dichteres en schrijfster Rosario Castellanos werd geboren in Mexico-stad op 25 mei 1925. Haar jeugd bracht zij door in Comitán, in het zuiden van Mexico. Na haar reizen naar Europa en de U.S.A. waar zij haar studies in de esthetica voleindigde, keerde zij terug naar de provincie van Chiapas om te werken met Indiaanse toneelgroepen en vervolgens in het “Indigenous Institute of San Cristobal”. In een groot deel van haar werk probeerde zij de afstand te overbruggen tussen de Pre-Colombiaanse en de Europese culturele tradities van Mexico. Vervreemding en eenzaamheid werden de rode draad in haar werk zowel in haar roman “Balin Canan” als in haar gedichten verzameld in “Poesía no eres tú ” Zij schreef naast poëzie en proza ook literaire essays, en een ophefmakend feministisch toneelstuk “El eterno femenino”.

 

 

Het dagelijks bestaan

 

Voor de liefde, Liefde, bestaan er geen hemelen, dan deze dag;

dit droevig haar dat valt

wanneer je je kamt voor de spiegel.

Die lange tunnels

die zich mengen met het gehijg en verstikken,

de wanden zonder ogen,

de holte die weerklinkt

van een occulte en onverstaanbare stem.

Voor de liefde, Liefde, is er geen pauze. De nacht

wordt niet plotseling verdraagbaar.

En wanneer een ster verbreekt zijn ketens

en jij haar ziet zigzaggen, en dol verloren gaan,

is er geen wet die haar haken losmaakt.

De ontmoeting gebeurt in het donker. In de kus

mengt zich de smaak van tranen.

En in de omhelzing vervlecht jij

de herinnering van een of andere verwarring, van een of andere dood.

 

 

 

Destiny

 

We kill what we love. What’s left

Was never alive.

No one else is close. What is forgotten,

What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.

We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath

Through someone else’s lung!

There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold

 

Both our bodies

And our ration of hope is small

And pain cannot be shared.

 

Man is an animal of solitudes,

A deer that bleeds as it flees

With an arrow in its side.

Ah, but hatred with its insomniac

Glass eyes; its attitude

Of menace and repose.

 

The deer goes to drink and a tiger

Is reflected in the water.

 

The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes

-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)

his enemy.

 

We give life only to what we hate.

 

 

Vertaald door Julian Palley

 

rosarioCastellanos

Rosario Castellanos (25 mei 1925 – 7 augustus 1974)

 

De Duitse schrijver Max von der Grün werd geboren op 25 mei 1926 in Bayreuth. Hij bezocht o.a. de handelsschool. Aan WO II nam hij deel als parachutespringer. Hij werd krijgsgevangene en kwam in 1948 vrij. Hij werd omgeschoold tot metselaar en later nog eens tot machinist in de mijnbouw. Pas in 1965 begon hij te schrijven. Hij gold als een van de belangrijkste schrijvers van literatuur uit de arbeiderswereld van na de oorlog.

 

Uit: Wie war das eigentlich?

 

Ein Schulkamerad von mir war von einem Fähnleinführer, dem Führer einer Hitlerjugendformation auf offener Straße zusammengeschlagen worden. Was war passiert?

 Die Hitlerjugend unserer Kleinstadt zog im Marschtritt durch den Ort, vorweg der Spielmannszug mit Fanfaren und Trommeln, dahinter der Fahnenträger, dann die drei Züge. Mein Schulkamerad, selbst Hitlerjunge, konnte an diesem Tag nicht mitmarschieren, denn seine Mutter war krank, und er mußte für sie einkaufen gehen. Bevor er die Straße überquerte, ließ er die braune Kolonne, in der er nur zufällig nicht mitmarschierte, vorbei.  

Es war Pflicht, die Fahne mit erhobenem Arm zu grüßen. Er vergaß es. Daraufhin rannte der Fähnleinführer aus der Kolonne und streckte den Jungen mit zwei Faustschlägen nieder, so daß er aus Mund und Nase blutete. Kein Wunder, denn der Fähnleinführer war achtzehn Jahre und stark, mein Schulkamerad gerade dreizehn und schmächtig.

Nirgendwo konnte er sich darüber beschweren, geschweige denn den Fähnleinführer wegen Körperverletzung anzeigen. Niemand hätte dem Jungen Recht gegeben – nicht umsonst hieß es in einem Lied der HJ: »… denn die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod.« 

 Die Fahne im Dritten Reich nicht zu grüßen war kein Vergehen, es war ein Verbrechen.  

Ein Nachspiel hatte die ganze Sache aber doch, nämlich in der Schule. Wir lasen gerade »Wilhelm Tell« von Schiller. In diesem Schauspiel erläßt der tyrannische Landvogt Geßler eine Verordnung, daß nicht nur er zu grüßen sei, sondern auch sein Hut, wenn er durch die Straßen der Stadt getragen werde.“  

 

VonDerGruen

Max von der Grün (25 mei 1926 – 7 april 2005)

 

De Canadese dichter en schrijver Alain Grandbois werd geboren op 25 mei 1900 in Saint-Casimir, Québec. Hij studeerde aan Saint Dunstan’s University in Charlottetown en tot 1924 aan de Laval University in Québec. Van 1924 tot 1939 leefde hij in Parijs. Na zijn  terugkeer naar Canada werkte hij voor de Bibliothèque Saint-Sulpice in Québec. Daarnaast werkte hij voor tijdschriften als Amérique française, Poésie 46, Liaison, Liberté en La nouvelle Revue canadienne. In 1961 werd hij medewerker van de Musée provincial de Québec. Grandbois ontving talrijke literaire prijzen.

 

Que la nuit soit parfaite

 

Que la nuit soit parfaite si nous en sommes dignes

Nulle pierre blanche ne nous indiquait la route

Où les faiblesses vaincues achevaient de mourir

 

Nous allions plus loin que les plus lointains horizons

Avec nos épaules et nos mains

Et cet élan pareil

Aux étincelles des insondables voûtes

Et cette faim de durer

Et cette soif de souffrir

Nous étouffant au cou

Comme mille pendaisons

 

Nous avons partagé nos ombres

Plus que nos lumières

Nous nous sommes montrés

Plus glorieux de nos blessures

Que des victoires éparses

Et des matins heureux

 

Et nous avonc construit mur à mur

La noire enceinte de nos solitudes

Et ces chaînes de fer rivées à nos chevilles

Forgées du métal le plus dur

 

Que parfaite soit la nuit où nous nous enfonçons

Nous avons détruit tout bonheur et toute tendresse

Et nos cris désormais

N’auront plus que le tremblant écho

Des poussières perdues

Aux gouffres des néants

 

AlainGrandbois

Alain Grandbois (25 mei 1900 – 18 maart 1975)

 

De Albanese dichter en schrijver Naim Frashëri werd geboren op 25 mei 1846 in Frashër. Hij werkte eerst als belastingambtenaar in Berat en daarna van 1872 tot 1877 bij de douane in Saranda. In deze tijd begon hij zijn eerste gedichten te schrijven die vanaf 1885 ook gepubliceerd werden. Behalve in zijn eigen taal schreef hij ook in het Turks, het Grieks en het Perzisch. Hij werd een van de belangrijkste schrijvers van de Albanese tijdschriften “Dituria” (1884-85) en “Drita” (na 1885), die door zijn broer Sami werden uitgegeven. Hij groeide uit tot een klassiek auteur en tot de nationale dichter van Albanië.

 

Oh mountains of Albania (Fragment)

 

Oh mountains of Albania and you, oh trees so lofty,
Broad plains with all your flowers, day and night I contemplate you,
You highlands so exquisite, and you streams and rivers sparkling,
Oh peaks and promontories, and you slopes, cliffs, verdant forests,
Of the herds and flocks I’ll sing out which you hold and which you nourish.
Oh you blessed, sacred places, you inspire and delight me!
You, Albania, give me honour, and you name me as Albanian,
And my heart you have replenished both with ardour and desire.
Albania! Oh my mother! Though in exile I am longing,
My heart has ne’er forgotten all the love you’ve given to me.
When a lambkin from its flock strays and does hear its mother’s bleating,
Once or twice it will give answer and will flee in her direction,
Were others, twenty-thirty fold, to block its path and scare it,
Despite its fright it would return, pass through them like an arrow,
Thus my wretched heart in exile, here in foreign land awaiting,
Hastens back unto that country, swift advancing and in longing.

 

 

 

Vertaald door Robert Elsie

 

 

Naim_Frasheri

Naim Frashëri (25 mei 1846 – 20 oktober 1900)
Standbeeld in Tirana

 

De Britse schrijver, criticus en politicus Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton werd geboren in Londen op 25 mei 1803. Op zeer jonge leeftijd verloor hij zijn vader. Als voorbereiding voor de Cambridge University studeerde hij Latijn, Grieks, geschiedenis en retoriek in Ealing. In 1820 werd Ismaël: An Oriental Tale gepubliceerd. Hoewel de verkoop zeer mager was, kreeg hij toch erkenning voor dit werk van Sir Walter Scott. In 1822 ging hij naar het Trinity College in Cambridge. Als lid van de Union Debating Society ontmoette hij onder andere Thomas Babington Macaulay, Alexander Cockburn, W.M. Praed, Charles Villiers, F.D. Maurice, Charles Buller, en Benjamin Hall Kennedy. Tijdens zijn jaren in Cambridge publiceerde hij Delmour; or, A Tale of a Sylphid, and Other Poems. In juli 1825 kreeg hij de Chancellors medaille voor zijn gedicht Sculpture. In die periode publiceerde hij ook de roman Rupert de Lindsay en zijn dichtbundel Weeds and Wildflowers.Tussen 1827 en 1835 schreef Bulwer-Lytton romans, gedichten en toneelstukken. Hij schreef ook artikels en kritieken in o.a. de New Monthly Magazine, The Edinburgh Review en de Westminster Review. In 1831 werd hij verkozen als parlementslid. Bulwer-Lytton was minister van Koloniën van 1858 tot 1859.

 

Uit: Leila

 

„It was the summer of the year 1491, and the armies of Ferdinand and Isabel invested the city of Granada. The night was not far advanced; and the moon, which broke through the transparent air of Andalusia, shone calmly over the immense and murmuring encampment of the Spanish foe, and touched with a hazy light the snow- capped summits of the Sierra Nevada, contrasting the verdure and luxuriance which no devastation of man could utterly sweep from the beautiful vale below.

In the streets of the Moorish city many a group still lingered. Some, as if unconscious of the beleaguering war without, were listening in quiet indolence to the strings of the Moorish lute, or the lively tale of an Arabian improrvisatore; others were conversing with such eager and animated gestures, as no ordinary excitement could wring from the stately calm habitual to every oriental people. But the more public places in which gathered these different groups, only the more impressively heightened the desolate and solemn repose that brooded over the rest of the city.

At this time, a man, with downcast eyes, and arms folded within the sweeping gown which descended to his feet, was seen passing through the streets, alone, and apparently unobservent of all around him. Yet this indifference was by no means shared by the struggling crowds through which, from time to time, he musingly swept.“

 

Lytton_Bulwer_Lytton_Henry_William_Pickersgill

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (25 mei 1803 – 18 januari 1873)
Portret door Henry William Pickersgill

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

Uit: Self-Reliance

 

“I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,–that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,–and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for US than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole Cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

 

Ralph-Waldo-Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 mei 1803 – 27 april 1882)

Robert Ludlum, Theodore Roethke, Claire Castillon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Egyd Gstättner

In verband met een korte vakantie van Romenu zijn de postings even wat minder uitvoerig.

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Robert Ludlum werd geboren in New York op 25 mei 1927. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

 

Uit: The Paris Option

“The first warm winds of spring gusted along Paris’s narrow back streets and broad boulevards, calling winter-weary residents out into the night. They thronged the sidewalks, strolling, linking arms, filling the chairs around outdoor cafe tables, everywhere smiling and chatting. Even the tourists stopped complaining-this was the enchanting Paris promised in their travel guides.

Occupied with their glasses of vin ordinaire under the stars, the spring celebrators on the bustling rue de Vaugirard did not notice the large black Renault van with darkened windows that left the busy street for the boulevard Pasteur. The van circled around the block, down the rue du Dr Roux, and at last entered the quiet rue des Volontaires, where the only action was of a young couple kissing in a recessed doorway.

The black van rolled to a stop outside L’Institut Pasteur, cut its engine, and turned off its headlights. It remained there, silent, until the young couple, oblivious in their bliss, disappeared inside a building across the street.

The van’s doors clicked open, and four figures emerged clothed completely in black, their faces hidden behind balaclavas. Carrying compact Uzi submachine guns and wearing backpacks, they slipped through the night, almost invisible. A figure materialized from the shadows of the Pasteur Institute and guided them onto the grounds, while the street behind them remained quiet, deserted.

Out on the rue de Vaugirard, a saxophonist had begun to play, his music throaty and mellow. The night breeze carried the music, the laughter, and the scent of spring flowers in through the open windows of the multitude of buildings at the Pasteur. The famed research center was home to more than twenty-five hundred scientists, technicians, students, and administrators, and many still labored into the night.

The intruders had not expected so much activity. On high alert, they avoided the paths, listening, watching the windows and grounds, staying close to trees and structures as the sounds of the springtime gaiety frown the rue de Vaugirard increased.

But in his laboratory, all outside activity was lost on Dr. Emile Chambord, who sat working alone at his computer keyboard on the otherwise unoccupied second floor of his building. His lab was large, as befitted one of the institute’s most distinguished researchers. It boasted several prize pieces of equipment, including a robotic gene-chip reader and a scanning-tunneling microscope, which measured and moved individual atoms. But more personal and far more critical to him tonight were the files near his left elbow and, on his other side, a spiral-bound notebook, which was open to the page on which he was meticulously recording data.”

ludlum

Robert Ludlum (25 mei 1927 – 12 maart 2001)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Theodore Huebner Roethke werd geboren in Saginaw, Michigan op 25 mei 1908. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2006.

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine–
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me–
And that was scary–
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

 

Journey into the Interior

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
— Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

 

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood–
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks–is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is–
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind

Roethke

Theodore Roethke (25 mei 1908 – 1 augustus 1963)

 

De Franse schrijfster Claire Castillon werd geboren op 25 mei 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

 

Uit: Le grenier

 

J’ai décidé de ne plus rien passer par mon trou du cul, ni dans un sens, ni dans l’autre. Ni queue, ni crotte. J’ai trop peur que maman Perle ne me quitte par en bas, et je n’oublie pas que j’ai failli la perdre. Alors il faut que je mange très peu. Je vais mastiquer longuement, et avaler j
uste une bouchée par repas, que je rendrai plus tard, par en haut. Je n’irai plus jamais aux toilettes.
– Tu sais, Simon, j’ai décidé de ne plus jamis aller aux toilettes. Désormais, je fais que pipi.
– C’est intéressant. Tu en as d’autres comme ça? a demandé Simon.
– Non. Je gerbe souvent. C’est tout. Mais je crois que je l’ai déjà dit.
– Et sinon, a ajouté Simon, à part avaler des billes et arrêter de chier, tu as des projets?
– Non.
– Ecoute, si tu vis bien comme ça, tant mieux. Tu arrives à travailler?
– Très bien, ai-je répondu. Je travaille très bien.
– Je ne te propose pas d’aller diner? a-t-il ajouté. Tu préfères faire un footing?
– Non. Je vais aller vomir. J’ai pas assez craché mon déjeuner.

Je sens que j’ai frolé sa baffe dans ma gueule, mais rien. Il s’est levé, il a soupiré, je crois même qu’il a haussé les épaules, et il a claqué la porte. M’en fous. Il rappellera.
Ah, Simon…Quand comprendras-tu que j’ai envie que tu me cognes. Une fois. J’ai envie que tu me frappes et que tu me secoues par les bras, devant toi, comme on fait avec les bébés qui s’étouffent, ou avec les brancardiers qui bloquent un passage. Que tu gueules, que tu vocifères, que tu me pousses sur le carrelage contre lequel je m’éclaterai la tempe, et que tu me baises alors que je reprends à peine connaissance, en me murmurant que je suis la pute que tu aimes. »

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Claire Castillon (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 25 mei 1975)

 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

De Amerikaanse schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803.

De Oostenrijkse schrijver en essayist Egyd Gstättner werd geboren op 25 mei 1962 in Klagenfurt.

 

Robert Ludlum, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Roethke, Claire Castillon, Egyd Gstättner

De Amerikaanse schrijver Robert Ludlum werd geboren in New York op 25 mei 1927. Hij groeide op in New Jersey. Na de dood van zijn vader stuurde zijn moeder hem naar een kostschool in Connecticut. Op de Cheshire Academy maakte hij kennis met theaterproducties. Vlak voor het afronden van zijn studie aan de Wesleyan University, Middletown, trouwde hij in 1951 met Mary Ryducha, een actrice. Robert en Mary kregen drie kinderen. Robert Ludlum begon zijn carrière als acteur en theaterproducer. Hij speelde in verschillende Broadway-producties en werkte als acteur en producer mee aan 200 televisieprogramma’s. Er zijn meer dan 210 miljoen van zijn boeken (spionagethrillers) gedrukt, en deze zijn vertaald in 32 verschillende talen

Uit: The Hades Factor

“Mario Dublin stumbled along the busy downtown street, a dollar bill clutched in his shaking hand. With the intense purpose of a man who knew exactly where he was going, the homeless derelict swayed as he walked and slapped at his head with the hand that was not clutching the dollar. He reeled inside a cut-rate drugstore with discount signs plastered across both front windows.

Trembling, he shoved the dollar across the counter to the clerk. “Advil. Aspirin kills my stomach. I need Advil.”

The clerk curled his lip at the unshaved man in the ragged remnants of an army uniform. Still, business was business. He reached back to a shelf of analgesics and held out the smallest box of Advil. “You’d better have three more dollars to go with that one.”

Dublin dropped the single bill onto the counter and reached for the box.”

 

Ludlum

Robert Ludlum (25 mei 1927 – 12 maart 2001)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803. Hij was een van meest invloedrijke denkers van de Verenigde Staten. Na zelf net als zijn vader een unitaristist geworden te zijn, werd hij meer een transcendentalist. In september richtte hij samen met andere intellectuelen de Transcendental Club op. Het tijdschrift van dez club, The Dial, verscheen echter niet voor 1840. Emersons eerste essay, Nature, verscheen al in 1836. Veel van zijn essays kwamen voort uit de lezingen die hij gaf en waarmee hij zijn brood verdiende.

Uit:  Nature

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet.

Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 mei 1803 – 27 april 1882)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter Theodore Huebner Roethke werd geboren in Saginaw, Michigan op 25 mei 1908. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2006.

 

The Storm

 

1

 

Against the stone breakwater,

Only an ominous lapping,

While the wind whines overhead,

Coming down from the mountain,

Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;

A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,

And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against

       the lamp pole.


Where have the people gone?

There is one light on the mountain.

 

2

 

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,

The waves not yet high, but even,

Coming closer and closer upon each other;

A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,

Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,

The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,

Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.


A time to go home!–

And a child’s dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,

A cat runs from the wind as we do,

Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,

Where the heavy door unlocks,

And our breath comes more easy,–

Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over

The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating

The walls, the slatted windows, driving

The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer

To their cards, their anisette.

 

3

 

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.

We wait; we listen.

The storm lulls off, then redoubles,

Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,

Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,


Flattening the limber carnations.

 

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,

Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.

The bulb goes on and off, weakly.

Water roars into the cistern.


We lie closer on the gritty pillow,

Breathing heavily, hoping–

For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,

The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,

The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,

And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.

 

ROETHKE

Theodore Roethke (25 mei 1908 – 1 augustus 1963)
Portret door Mike Nease

 

De franse schrijfster Claire Castillon werd geboren op 25 mei 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Over haar leven is nog niet zoveel bekend. Volgens haar zelf houdt zij van de eenzaamheid. De onmogelijkheid een ander echt te bereiken en van geluk door intermenselijk contact zijn dan ook terugkerende thema’s in haar werk.

Uit: Pourquoi tu m’aimes pas? (2003)

« C’est à l’enterrement de Rodrigue, où la classe était chargée de la chorale que j’ai pu approcher Laurette. Elle pleurait et ça l’empêchait de chanter.
Je lui fis remarquer tout bas :
– Pleure pas, tu chantes faux.
Elle me décocha un regard insoutenable, plein de violence et d’incompréhension, et s’arrêta net de pleurer. Elle se remit à chanter juste. Elle était belle en noir, elle était sûrement plus belle toute nue, mais je l’aimais bien comme ça, veuve et perdue. Je lui pris la main. Elle se laissa faire. Je la tins pendant toute la cérémonie, puis à la mise en terre, puis lors du retour en bus, puis à la descente du bus, et, quand elle essaya de me lâcher dans la salle de classe, je la serrai plus fort. Je m’assis à côté d’elle, sa main gigotait dans la mienne, je sentais son pouls, c’était bon. J’étais droitier, elle aussi. Ça tombait mal. On allait devoir se séparer pour écrire la leçon. Je décidai de ne pas en tenir compte. Comme elle se tortillait sur la chaise, je lui murmurai d’arreter de gigoter, on allait se faire coller et elle serait bien avancée. Elle prit son stylo dans l’autre et ne se débrouilla pas si mal. »

 

Werk o.a. : Le grenier (2000), Je prends racine (2001), Vous parler d’elle (2004)

 

 

Casillon

Claire Castillon (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 25 mei 1975)

 

De Oostenrijkse schrijver en essayist Egyd Gstättner werd geboren op 25 mei 1962 in Klagenfurt. Daar studeerde hij ook filosofie, psychologie, pedagogie en germanistiek. Tijdens zijn studie publiceerde hij al in bladen als manuskripte, protokolle en Literatur und Kritik. Sinds 1989 is hij zelfstandig schrijver van voornamelijk essays en satirisch proza. Zijn werk verschijnt in o.a. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Presse, Falter en Die Furche

Uit: Herzmanovskys kleiner Bruder und andere Geschichten von Künstlern, Müßiggängern und Abenteurern

„Politisch bin ich – mit Altmeister Grünmandl gesprochen – vielleicht ein Trottel: Bei sämtlichen Volksbefragungen, Abstimmungen, Urnengängen, Wahlen meines Lebens bin ich auf kommunaler, regionaler, nationaler, internationaler Ebene ausnahmslos bei den Wahlverlierern und denen gewesen, die sich dem politischen Willen der Mehrheit beugen mußten. Urnengänge erzeugen bei mir automatisch Abbruchstimmung. Immerhin hält beugen fit und regt den Kreislauf an. Und zu den Favoriten, den Siegern und den Mächtigen zu halten wäre ordinär. Manchmal habe ich es mit meinem exotischen Kreuzchen auf Erdrutschniederlage und Debakel förmlich angelegt, das ist mein gutes Recht als Demokrat. Ganz besonders überfordert mich offen gesagt die europäische Europapolitik. Damals, 1994, habe ich, weil links und rechts alles so enorm auf historisches Verantwortungsbewußtsein gemacht haben und so viele ebenso gut wie seriöse Argumente sowohl für als auch gegen den Beitritt Österreichs zur Europäischen Union gebracht haben, sowohl ja als auch nein angekreuzt. Ich nehme an, mein Votum war bei aller Weisheit und Weitsicht ungültig, aber auf komplizierte Fragen gebe ich eben komplizierte Antworten. Das ist mein gutes Recht als Demokrat.“

 

GSTAETTNER

Egyd Gstättner (Klagenfurt, 25 mei 1962)