De Nederlandse letterkundige, essayist en criticus W.J.M. Bronzwaer werd geboren op 15 mei 1936 in Heerlen. Zie ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2008 en ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
Uit: Lessen in lyriek
„Men kan Rilkes diepverborgen coïncidenties dus verstaan als semantische relaties die in de secundaire code tot stand worden gebracht of tot leven worden gewekt. Soms sluimeren die semantische relaties al in de primaire code; dat is het geval bij de eerder besproken rijmwoorden oud en woud, of bij de rijmwoorden roes en kroes in deze strofe van Geerten Gossaert (1884-1958), uit De Coma Berenices:
Lang mij nog eens den vollen kroes
Van liefdes zoeten zwijmelwijn.
Mij hunkert naar den diepen roes
Van in U zelfvergeten zijn.
Tussen roes en kroes bestaat een semantische relatie in de primaire code: de woorden zijn semantisch verwant en het rijm ligt evenzeer ‘voor de hand’ als dat tussen oud en woud of hart en smart. Maar op andere plaatsen in deze tekst treden verborgen coïncidenties aan het licht, worden semantische relaties tot stand gebracht of geactiveerd waarvan wij ons niet bewust waren. Op posities die zowel syntactisch als metrisch equivalent zijn, staan bijvoorbeeld zwijmelwijn en vergeten zijn en deze equivalentie verrijkt de betekenis van het woord zwijmelen: dat heeft hier meer met bewustzijnsverlies dan met sentimentaliteit te maken. Via een andere positionele equivalentie is met zwijmelwijn het woord liefde verbonden, dat zelf weer positioned te verbinden is met in U. Zelf en U zijn verbonden door hun heffingsequivalentie, die door de antimetrie op U extra wordt benadrukt; daar zelf met vergeten is verbonden ontstaat de betekenis dat de geliefde alleen kan worden bereikt als de minnaar van alle zelfbewustzijn afstand doet. Deze betekenis blijft echter overschaduwd door het besef dat deze ideaaltoestand van de liefde als absoluut altruïsme toch ook een sentimentele dronkemansdroom moet heten.“
Portret van Geerten Gossaert door Karel van Veen
(Geen portrtet van W.J.M. Bronzwaer beschikbaar)
De Nederlandse historisch letterkundige Frits van Oostrom werd geboren in Utrecht op 15 mei 1953. Zie ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
Uit: Floris ende Blancefloer (Diederic van Assenede, ca. 1255, Vlaanderen)
Doe rechte hem Floris van den grave,
Niet verre bleef hi staende daer ave;
Tenen griffie voedersele hi vinc
Daer ene guldine griffie in hinc,
Die hem hadde gegeven Blancefloer
Op minne, doe hi van haer voer.
Alse Floris die griffie uut trac,
Hi hiltse vor hem ende sprac:
‘Dese griffie, Blancefloer, daeddi maken
Ende gaefse mi bi derre saken,
Als icse dan saghe, dat si woude
Dat ic haers gedinken soude.
Nu leget mijn troest an di allene,
Du salt mi lossen uten wene,
Daer ic in ben, ende nemen mi dat leven,
Al ne waerstu mi niet daer toe gegeven.
Vertaling:
Floris stond op van het graf en
bleef niet ver van daar stilstaan.
Hij pakte een griffelkoker,
met daarin een gouden schrijfstift,
die Blancefloer hem als teken van haar liefde
had gegeven toen hij van haar wegging.
Hij trok de griffel uit de koker,
hield hem voor zich en sprak:
‘Blancefloer, deze griffel heb je
laten maken en aan mij gegeven,
omdat je wilde dat ik aan je
zou denken als ik hem zag.
Nu ben jij, griffel, mijn enige toevlucht,
jij moet me verlossen uit mijn ellende
en me doden, ook al ben je
me niet voor dat doel gegeven.
De Amerikaanse schrijver Paul Zindel werd geboren op 15 mei 1936 in New York. Zie en ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
Uit: The Undertaker’s Gone Bananas
„Then the rest of the afternoon they hardly spoke about Mr. Hulka at all. There were too many other important possibilities for the summer coming up. And before long they were into their favorite pastime – which was looking off the terrace and over the terrain of their past exploits. The things they had done on the Palisade Cliffs and the George Washington Bridge – and then across the way on the New York side of the river where The Cloisters was set on top of th ehills above the Henry Hudson Parkway. At least a couple of times a week they looked off the terrace and reminisced about the time they borrowed choir robes from Grace Methodist Church and got dressed as a monk and a nun. Lauri had spent three days making the hat which looked a little bit like a giant dove sitting on her head. And they had gone up to the grounds of The Cloisters which was a religious museum that housed the intricate Unicorn tapestries. Bobby h ad added a hood to his robe so he really looked monastic. And Lauri had also fashioned a stiff white bib, and they strolled The Cloisters grounds all day sipping Coca-Cola and speaking loudly so the tourists could hear them. They kept saying that they were appointed by the archdiocese to guard the Unicorn because of their chosen spiritual identification with all things mystical and magical. Another time, right on the edge of the Cliffs, they had held a marshmellow roast which the Fort Lee police had raided and made them
extinguish. Bobby had told them he was the son of the Rockefellers who owned all the land but they had chased them away anyway. It seemed like Fort Lee had only about three or four policement who worked the Cliff areas and in less than a year Bobby and Lauri had gotten to know all of them through their high jinx. The one who usually caught them was Patrolman Petrie. Patrolman Petrie was also the one who came after them on the middle of the George Washington Bridge the day Lauri and Bobby decided to walk across wearing ape masks.“
De Russische schrijver Mikhail Afanasjevitsj Bulgakov werd geboren op 15 mei 1891 in Kiev. Zie ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
Uit: The Master and Margarita (Vertaald door Michael Glenny)
„At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriarch’s Ponds. The first of them–aged about forty, dressed in a greyish summer suit–was short, dark-haired, well-fed and bald. He carried his decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly shaven face was embellished
by black hornrimmed spectacles of preternatural dimensions. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with curly reddish hair and a check cap pushed back to the nape of his neck, was wearing a tartan shirt, chewed white trousers and black sneakers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of a highbrow literary magazine and chairman of the management cofnmittee of one of the biggest Moscow literary clubs, known by its abbreviation as massolit; his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov who wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny.
Reaching the shade of the budding lime trees, the two writers went straight to a gaily-painted kiosk labelled’Beer and Minerals’.
There was an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth recording : not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard–yet no one had come out for a walk under the limes, no one was sitting on a bench, the avenue was empty.“
De Amerikaanse schrijver Lyman Frank Baum werd geboren in Chittenango op 15 mei 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
Uit: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
„When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.
When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled, now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy’s merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.
Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.“
De Amerikaanse schrijfster en journaliste Katherine Anne Porter werd geboren op 15 mei 1890 in Indian Creek, Texas. Zie ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
Uit: Collected Stories and Other Writings
„My stories are fragments, each one touching some phase of a versatile national temperament, which is a complication of simplicities: but I like best the quality of aesthetic magnificence, and, above all, the passion for individual expression without hypocrisy, which is the true genius of the race.
I have been accused by Americans of a taste for the exotic, for foreign flavors. Maybe so, for New York is the most foreign place I know, and I like it very much. But in my childhood I knew the French-Spanish people in New Orleans and the strange “Cajans” in small Louisiana towns, with their curious songs and customs and blurred patois; the German colonists in Texas and the Mexicans of the San Antonio country, until it seemed to me that all my life I had lived among people who spoke broken, laboring tongues, who put on with terrible difficulty, yet with such good faith, the ways of the dominant race about them. This is true here in New York also, I know: but I have never thought of these people as any other than American. Literally speaking, I have never been out of America; but my America has been a borderland of strange tongues and commingled races, and if they are not American, I am fearfully mistaken. The artist can do no more than deal with familiar and beloved things, from which he could not, and, above all, would not escape. So I claim that I write of things native to me, that part of America to which I belong by birth and association and temperament, which is as much the province of our native literature as Chicago or New York or San Francisco. All the things I write of I have first known, and they are real to me.“
Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 15 mei 2009.
De Zwitserse dichter, schrijver en beeldend kunstenaar René Regenass werd geboren op 15 mei 1935 in Basel.