De Engelse schrijver, journalist en literatuurcriticus John Boynton Priestley werd geboren in Bradford op 13 september 1894. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 september 2007.

Uit: An Inspector Calls and Other Plays

 

“SHEILA: How did you come to know this girl, Eva Smith?

GERALD: I didn’t

SHEILA: Daisy Renton then – it’s the same thing.

GERALD: Why should I have known her?

SHEILA: Oh, don’t be stupid. We haven’t much time. You gave yourself away as soon as he mentioned her name.

GERALD: All right. I knew her. Let’s leave it at that.

SHEILA: We can’t leave it at that.

GERALD: [approaching her] Now listen, darling –

SHEILA: No, that’s no use. You not only knew her, but you knew her very well. Otherwise, you wouldn’t look so guilty about it. When did you first get to know her? [He does not reply.] Was it after she left Milwards? When she changed her name, as he said, and began to live a different sort of life? Were you seeing her last spring and summer, during that time when you hardly came near me and said you were so busy? Were you? [He does not reply but looks at her.] Yes, of course you were.

GERALD: I’m sorry, Sheila. But it was all over and done with last summer. I hadn’t set eyes on the girl for at least six months. I don’t come into this suicide business.

SHEILA: I thought I didn’t, half an hour ago.

GERALD: You don’t. Neither of us does. So – for God’s sake – don’t say anything to the Inspector.

SHEILA: About you and this girl?

GERALD:Yes. We can keep it from him.

SHEILA: [laughs rather hysterically] Why – you fool – he knows. Of course he knows. And I hate to think how much he knows that we don’t know yet. You’ll see. You’ll see. [She looks at him almost in triumph] [He looks crushed. The door slowly opens and the INSPECTOR appears, looking steadily and searchingly at them.]

INSPECTOR: Well?”

 

J. B. Priestley (13 september 1894 – 14 augustus 1984)

 

De Poolse dichter Julian Tuwim werd geboren in Łódź op 13 september 1894. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 september 2007.

 

The Locomotive

A big locomotive has pulled into town,
Heavy, humungus, with sweat rolling down,
A plump jumbo olive.
Huffing and puffing and panting and smelly,
Fire belches forth from her fat cast iron belly.

Poof, how she’s burning,
Oof, how she’s boiling,
Puff, how she’s churning,
Huff, how she’s toiling.
She’s fully exhausted and all out of breath,
Yet the coalman continues to stoke her to death.

Numerous wagons she tugs down the track:
Iron and steel monsters hitched up to her back,
All filled with people and other things too:
The first carries cattle, then horses not few;
The third car with corpulent people is filled,
Eating fat frankfurters all freshly grilled.
The fourth car is packed to the hilt with bananas,
The fifth has a cargo of six grand pi-an-as.
The sixth wagon carries a cannon of steel,
With heavy iron girders beneath every wheel.
The seventh has tables, oak cupboards with plates,
While an elephant, bear, two giraffes fill the eighth.
The ninth contains nothing but well-fattened swine,
In the tenth: bags and boxes, now isn’t that fine?

There must be at least forty cars in a row,
And what they all carry — I simply don’t know:

But if one thousand athletes, with muscles of steel,
Each ate one thousand cutlets in one giant meal,
And each one exerted as much as he could,
They’d never quite manage to lift such a load.

First a toot!
Then a hoot!
Steam is churning,
Wheels are turning!

More slowly – than turtles – with freight – on their – backs,
The drowsy – steam engine – sets off – down the tracks.
She chugs and she tugs at her wagons with strain,
As wheel after wheel slowly turns on the train.
She doubles her effort and quickens her pace,
And rambles and scrambles to keep up the race.
Oh whither, oh whither? go forward at will,
And chug along over the bridge, up the hill,
Through mountains and tunnels and meadows and woods,
Now hurry, now hurry, deliver your goods.
Keep up your tempo, now push along, push along,
Chug along, tug along, tug along, chug along
Lightly and sprightly she carries her freight
Like a ping-pong ball bouncing without any weight,
Not heavy equipment exhausted to death,
But a little tin toy, just a light puff of breath.
Oh whither, oh whither, you’ll tell me, I trust,
What is it, what is it that gives you your thrust?
What gives you momentum to roll down the track?
It’s hot steam that gives me my clickety-clack.
Hot steam from the boiler through tubes to the pistons,
The pistons then push at the wheels from short distance,
They drive and they push, and the train starts a-swooshin’
‘Cuz steam on the pistons keeps pushin’ and pushin’;
The wheels start a rattlin’, clatterin’, chatterin’
Chug along, tug along, chug along, tug along! . . . .

 

Julian Tuwim (13 september 1894 – 27 december 1953)

 

 

De Estische dichter, schrijver en vertaler Tõnu Õnnepalu werd geboren op 13 september 1962 in Tallin. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 september 2007.

 

Uit: Hasso Krull, an anarchist winter poet

 

“Hasso Krull is a winter poet. I’m not saying this merely out of opportunism – his latest and much acclaimed collection of poetry (2006) was titled Winter. As Hasso’s contemporary, indeed almost the same age, I also remember his first. That was called winter too. Although not literally, and it wasn’t even Hasso Krull’s book. The author was Max Harnoon, a portrait of Hasso as a very young man (in 1986) and the title was Black-white. Which is more or less the same. Black-white, winter.
It is fascinating to draw a line of tension between a poet’s first and last (so far) collections of poetry. The first book already contains everything, and the latest shows what has become of all that. Talking about winter, which in the northern parts up here is inevitably also black-white (if there is no snow, then just black), I am not just juggling with words. There is something much more here: the main tone. And it is wintery. Maybe I would not remember or be so certain, but as it happens I wrote a review of that first book, in the form of a poem, because it inspired me. In 1986, the book was something truly new, truly contemporary. In that poetic review, as I recall, winter dominated. Just like at the end of the book by that young man Max Harnoon (Hasso never used this, or any other pseudonym, again). The next to the last poem, White and pure world, white and pure, has the lines:

only thee, winter,
can bridge all that exists

What intimacy: thee, winter! And the idea that winter is something that joi
ns rather than separating, is a refuge and not an enemy. Although the poem contains references to death (Lethe and Styx), as indeed does the whole book, a very young poet always talks about death. At 42, Hasso Krull no longer mentions death in his Winter, at least not quite so directly. 42-year-old Hasso is naturally more vital, less symbolic and airy than 22-year-old Max. And much more social, although this word has become rather pointless and even repulsive from its overuse in poetry. The so-called ‘social’ poetry is often nothing but a weird neo-Stalinism, flat newspaperish ‘social criticism’, for some reason liked by some festivals, critics and naturally the press – in a word, it is just a banal ‘bazaar joke’ and not poetry in the lofty sense of the word, which was still taken for granted in Estonia in 1986. The inner seriousness (without however being overtly serious, as there is plenty of quiet humour in it) of Hasso’s poetry might partly be a historical legacy of Estonian resistance culture, where we grew up and where poetry was, incidentally, always social, i.e. political, even the ‘purest’ nature poetry, and perhaps that especially…”

 

Tõnu Õnnepalu (Tallin, 13 september 1962)

 

De Nederlandse dichter, predikant en hoogleraar Nicolaas Beets werd geboren op 13 september 1814 in Haarlem. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 september 2006.

 

Uit: Camera Obscura

 

“Beste Hildebrand!

Ik verneem met een zeker genoegen, dat er van tijd tot tijd iets van u gedrukt wordt; met een zeker genoegen, zeg ik; want wij hebben nog samen school gegaan. Ik heb toen altijd wel gedacht dat er wat in u zat, maar ik wist niet of er ooit wat uit u komen zou. Mijn vader zegt evenwel dat hij dat altijd voorspeld heeft, ofschoon ik er mij niets van herinner, maar wel weet ik dat ik driemaal een hekel aan u gehad heb, omdat mijn vader u tot een voorbeeld van goed oppassen nam, en ik wist dat ge ook wel een kattekwaad deedt, Hildje! Denk maar eens aan de klapdeur van het Bonte Kalfje, die alle morgens om halftien en iedere namiddag om drie uren werd opgengetrokken dat de bel rammelde, een kwartier lang, als het Franse gebed al lang op school was voorgelezen. – Maar dat daargelaten, vriend; ik hoor dat gij weer iets op de pers hebt, en gij zult mij, op grond van heel goede kennis, wel vergunnen willen, u enige raadgevingen mede te delen. Ik ken mensen, die dat veel liever doen bij wijze van recensiën; daar zijn er, die de kopij onberispelijk en het gedrukte boek allerdolst vinden; maar ik hou van die methode niet, en kom liever met mijn raad voorop.

Eerst echter wilde ik u vragen, ronduit vragen, of gij een humorist zijt? Ik denk het half, omdat het tegenwoordig zo ijselijk aan de orde is. Kijk Hildebrand, als gij een humorist waart, dat zou me lelijk spijten; ik zou haast zeggen, schoon mijn hart er bij breekt: – als gij een humorist zijn, Hildebrand, leg drie stuivers uit, koop een touw, en … Maar gij zijt immers geen humorist, mijn waarde! O zeg, dat gij het niet zijt.

Daar is tegenwoordig zulk een ontzettende comsumptie van humor, mijn vriend, dat dit artikel verschrikkelijk duur moet geworden zijn en dan ook bij gevolg akelig wordt vervalst.

Ik ben overtuigd dat er in iedere kerk, de dominee meegerekend, meer dan honderd humoristen bijeen zijn. Men komt in geen koffiehuis, men rijdt in geen diligence, ja wat meer is: men zit in geen ‘bijwagen’ zonder een humorist. Het hele land is er van vergiftigd: humoristen op rijm; humoristen in proza; geleerde humoristen; huiselijke humoristen; hoge humoristen; lage humoristen; hybridische hum
oristen; bloempjes-humoristen; tekst-humoristen; sprookjes humoristen; vrouwenhatende en vrouwenflemende humoristen; sentimentele humoristen; ongelikte humoristen; gedachte denkende humoristen; boek-, recensie-, mengelwerk-, brief-, voorrede-, titelblad-humoristen; humoristen, die op de grote lui schelden en verklaren dat die geen greintje gevoel hebben, omdat ze een knecht hebben met galons aan de rok, en een spelende pendule; humoristen, die het met bedelaars houden in de boeken, en ze naar Frederiksoord helpen sturen in de Maatschappij van Weldadigheid; reizende humoristen; huiszittende humoristen; tuin- en priëeltje-humoristen, wier vrouwen aan iets ander bezig zijn, terwijl zij humoriseren; en dan eindelijk de hele simpele plattelandshumoristen, schoon ze allegaar wel een deel van simpelheid weg hebben, in deze manier: ‘je zoudt wel denken dat ik helemaal onnozel was, maar ’t is allemaal lievigheid!’ Ik spreek niet van de hele grappige, de zee onfeilbare, en de zeer onduidelijke humoristen…. “

 

Nicolaas Beets (13 september 1814 –  13 maart 1903)

 

Voor onderstaande schrijvers zie ook mijn blog van 13 september 2006.

 De Britse schrijver Roald Dahl werd geboren op 13 september 1916 in Llandalf, Zuid-Wales.

De Nederlandse wetenschapper en publicist, vrijdenker en anarchist Anton Constandse werd geboren in Brouwershaven op 13 september 1899.

De Engelse schrijver, journalist en literatuurcriticus John Boynton Priestley werd geboren in Bradford op 13 september 1894. Tijdens WO I diende hij in het leger als vrijwilliger. Na de oorlog begon hij aan een studie literatuur en geschiedenis in Cambridge. Vanaf 1922 was hij als zelfstandig schrijver en criticus werkzaam. Hij schreef romans, toneelstukken, korte verhalen en essays. Tot aan 1940 wijdde hij zich aan het theater. Ook als regisseur en zelfs een keer als acteur. Tijdens WO II werkte hij voor de BBC. In die tijd werd hij een van Engelands populairste radiopresentatoren.

Uit: English Journey

“Southampton to Newcastle, Newcastle to Norwich: memories rose like milk coming to the boil. I had seen England. I had seen a lot of Englands. How many? At once, three disengaged themselves from the shifting mass. There was first, Old England, the country of the cathedrals and minsters and manor houses and inns, of parson and Squire; guide-book and quaint highways and byways England… Then, I decided, there is the nineteenth-century England, the industrial England of coal, iron, steel, cotton, wool, railways; of thousands of rows of little houses all alike, sham Gothic churches, square-faced chapels, Town Halls, Mechanics’ Institutes, mills, foundries, warehouses, refined watering-places, Pier Pavilions, Family and Commercial Hotels, Literary and Philosophical Societies, back-to-back houses, detached villas with monkey-trees, Grill Rooms, railway stations, slag-heaps and ‘tips’, dock roads, Refreshment Rooms, doss-houses, Unionist or Liberal Clubs, cindery waste ground, mill chimneys, slums, fried-fish shops, public-houses with red blinds, bethels in corrugated iron, good-class draper’s and confectioners’ shops, a cynically devastated countryside, sooty dismal little towns, and still sootier grim fortress-like cities. This England makes up the larger part of the Midlands and the North and exists everywhere; but it is not been added to and has no new life poured into it…”

 

John Boynton Priestley (13 september 1894 – 14 augustus 1984)

 

De Poolse dichter Julian Tuwim werd geboren in Łódź op 13 september 1894. Hij was oprichter van de dichtersgroep Skamander en een prominent vertegenwoordiger van het literaire cabaret in de jaren twintig en dertig. Ook was hij vertaler uit het Russisch. Tijdens de bezetting emigreerde Tuwim naar via Frankrijk en Zuidamerika naar de VS. Na de oorlog was hij een van de eerste schrijvers die naar Polen terugkeerden.

 

The Common Man

When plastered billboards scream with slogans
‘fight for your country, go to battle’
When media’s print assaults your senses,
‘Support our leaders’ shrieks and rattles…
And fools who don’t know any better
Believe the old, eternal lie
That we must march and shoot and kill
Murder, and burn, and bomb, and grill…

When press begins the battle-cry
That nation needs to unify
And for your country you must die…
Dear brainwashed friend, my neighbor dear
Brother from this, or other nation
Know that the cries of anger, fear,
Are nothing but manipulation
by fat-cats, kings who covet riches,
And feed off your sweat and blood – the leeches!
When call to arms engulfs the land
It means that somewhere oil was found,
Shooting ‘blackgold’ from underground!
It means they found a sneaky way
To make more money, grab more gold
But this is not what you are told!

Don’t spill your blood for bucks or oil
Break, burn your rifle, shout: ‘NO DEAL!’
Let the rich scoundrels, kings, and bankers
Send their own children to get killed!
May your loud voice be amplified
By roar of other common men
The battle-weary of all nations:
WE WON’T BE CONNED TO WAR AGAIN

 

Julian Tuwim (13 september 1894 – 27 december 1953)

 

De Estische dichter, schrijver en vertalerTõnu Õnnepalu werd geboren op 13 september 1962 in Tallin. Tot 1985 studeerde hij botanica en ecologie aan de universiteit van Tartu. Daarna doceerde hij scheikunde en biologie. Sinds 1988 is hij werkzaam als zelfstandig schrijver en vertaler en tevens als redacteur bij het culturele tijdschrift Vikerkaar. In 1993 kwam hij internationaal in de belangstelling met zijn roman Piiririik (Engels: “Border State”) die verscheen onder zijn pseudoniem Emil Tode.
Het boek werd in veertien talen vertaald en werd het meest vertaalde boek uit Estland gedurende de jaren negentig.

Uit: Practicing

 

“I don’t want any changes. In my life, that is. Nothing about it must change.
Let it all stay the way it always has been. Everything around me can change, that’s fascinating; it’s thrilling to observe the reforms, catastrophes, revolutions and wars. But only from a distance. My greatest mistake has been to imagine I want changes in my life.
Why should life change? It’s disturbing enough without any changes. It’s hard enough to make sense of it already.
Routine is the greatest blessing, but in my ingratitude I have regarded it as
the source of my despair. And yet by instinct I have never sought anything but
stability. A means to make my life so routinely repetitive that it would fade away completely, allowing me an unobstructed view. //to observe unobstructed//
Today, like every other working day, at about two o’clock I took a train to the Notre-Dame des Champs metro station. There’s one change to make
on the way, but it’s still quick. I know all the stops by heart. I know which end of
the train is more convenient and what comes after what: Rue du Bac, Sevres-Babylone, Rennes, Notre-Dame des Champs.
There’s a small sandwich bar there that I discovered last summer, when
this exhibition was on in the jardin de Luxemburg. It’s cheap, only 35 francs a meal. For that I get a toasted panini — either chicken curry or turkey emmental — an iced tea (there are’t any hot drinks on the menu) and a flan — a dull-looking, actually rather repulsive cake that I like because it reminds me of the custard cake or pie of my childhood. I always pretend to make my selection carefully, then with calculated pauses I inform the girl, the woman or the man — whoever happens to be standing behind the counter at the time — of my choice. This is my daily act of social intercourse, my gesture of communication with this city. I have no
desire for any more intimate relationship with the people at the counter. I feel annoyed by the very fact that they recognize me and are accustomed to my daily appearance. If it were up to me I’d make them forget me every day, so I could just keep on dropping in for the first time, in passing.
But what’s more important than that is that the sandwich bar holds no surprises for me. The panini and the cake always taste the same. The flavour of the iced tea depends on whether I bother to specify citron, other wise they always give me peche, the peach. That makes no great difference. But today for some reason I decided to vary my menu and took apple tarte instead of the flan. This change bothered me right through the meal. I had to think about the apple tarte, I couldn’t be sure it would prove satisfactory. And in fact, it was a bit too sweet.”

Tõnu Õnnepalu (Tallin, 13 september 1962)

 

Voor onderstaande schrijvers zie ook mijn blog van 13 september 2006.

 

De Nederlandse dichter, predikant en hoogleraarr Nicolaas Beets werd geboren op 13 september 1814 in Haarlem.

 

De Britse schrijver Roald Dahl werd geboren op 13 september 1916 in Llandalf, Zuid-Wales.

De Nederlandse wetenschapper en publicist, vrijdenker en anarchist Anton Constandse werd geboren in Brouwershaven op 13 september 1899.