De Engelse dichter Dylan Thomas werd geboren op 27 oktober 1914 in Swansea in Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2007 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

Clown in the Moon 

My tears are like the quiet drift

Of petals from some magic rose;

And all my grief flows from the rift

Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble;

It is so sad and beautiful,

So tremulously like a dream.

Deaths and Entrances 

On almost the incendiary eve

Of several near deaths,

When one at the great least of your best loved

And always known must leave

Lions and fires of his flying breath,

Of your immortal friends

Who'd raise the organs of the counted dust

To shoot and sing your praise,

One who called deepest down shall hold his peace

That cannot sink or cease

Endlessly to his wound

In many married London's estranging grief.

On almost the incendiary eve

When at your lips and keys,

Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave,

One who is most unknown,

Your polestar neighbour, sun of another street,

Will dive up to his tears.

He'll bathe his raining blood in the male sea

Who strode for your own dead

And wind his globe out of your water thread

And load the throats of shells

with every cry since light

Flashed first across his thunderclapping eyes.

On almost the incendiary eve

Of deaths and entrances,

When near and strange wounded on London's waves

Have sought your single grave,

One enemy, of many, who knows well

Your heart is luminous

In the watched dark, quivering through locks and caves,

Will pull the thunderbolts

To shut the sun, plunge, mount your darkened keys

And sear just riders back,

Until that one loved least

Looms the last Samson of your zodiac.

Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed 

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound

In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat

On the silent sea we have heard the sound

That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening

To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound

And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing

The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,

Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat

For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,

We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.

Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,

Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Frog Autumn

Summer grows old, cold-blooded mother.

The insects are scant, skinny.

In these palustral homes we only

Croak and wither.

Mornings dissipate in somnolence.

The sun brightens tardily

Among the pithless reeds. Flies fail us.

he fen sickens.

Frost drops even the spider. Clearly

The genius of plenitude

Houses himself elsewhwere. Our folk thin

Lamentably.

The Times Are Tidy

Unlucky the hero born

In this province of the stuck record

Where the most watchful cooks go jobless

And the mayor's rotisserie turns

Round of its own accord.

There's no career in the venture

Of riding against the lizard,

Himself withered these latter-days

To leaf-size from lack of action :

History's beaten the hazard.

The last crone got burnt up

More than eight decades back

With the love-hot herb, the talking cat,

But the children are better for it,

The cow milks cream an inch thick.

Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)

Zelfportret

De Egyptische schrijfster, gynaecologe, moslimfeministe en politiek activiste Nawal el Saadawi werd geboren in Kafr Tahla op 27 oktober 1931. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

Uit: Memoirs from the Women's Prison

“From the moment I opened my eyes upon my first morning in prison, I understood from the motion of my body as I was rising and stretching the muscles of my neck and back, that I had made a firm decision: I would live in this place as I had lived in any other. It was a decision which appeared insane to me, for it would cancel out reality, logic, the walls and the steel doors.

I tossed and turned upon the wooden board, unable to close an eyelid. I became aware that torture in prison does not take place by means of the bars, or the walls, or the stinging insects, or hunger or thirst or insults or beating. Prison is doubt. And doubt is the most certain of tortures. It is doubt that kills the intellect and body - not doubt in others, but doubt in oneself…The baffling, crushing question for the mind: was I right or wrong?

In prison I came to know both extremes together. I experienced the height of grief and joy, the peaks of pain and pleasure, the greatest beauty and the most intense ugliness… In prison I found my heart opened to love - how I don't know - as if I were back in early adolescence. In prison, I remembered the way I had burst out laughing when a child, while the taste of tears from the harshest and hardest days of my life returned to my mouth.“

Nawal el Saadawi (Kafr Tahla, 27 oktober 1931)

De Britse schrijfster Enid Algerine Bagnold werd geboren op 27 oktober 1889 in Rochester, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

Uit: National Velvet

“Unearthly humps of land curved into the darkening sky like the backs of browsing pigs, like the rumps of elephants. At night when the stars rose over them they looked like a starlit herd of divine pigs. The villagers called them Hullocks.

The valleys were full of soft and windblown vegetation. The sea rolled at the foot of all as though God had brought his herd down to water.

The Hullocks were blackening as Velvet cantered down the chalk road to the village. She ran on her own slender legs, making horse-noises and chirrups and occasionally striking her thigh with a switch, holding at the same time something very small before her as she ran. The light on the chalk road was the last thing to gleam and die. The flints slipped and flashed under her feet. Her cotton dress and her cottony hair blew out, and her lips were parted for breath in a sweet metallic smile. She had the look of a sapling-Dante as she ran through the darkness downhill.

At the entrance to the village the sea was pounding up the sewer with a spring gale behind it. She passed to the third cottage, stopped at the door, opened it, let a gush of light onto the pavement, closed it and carried her tender object inside.

Edwina, Malvolia and Meredith sat in their father's, Mr. Brown's, sitting room just before suppertime. It was dark outside and hot inside, and outside in the darkness the Hullocks went up in great hoops above the village. There was an oil stove in the comer of the sitting room and lesson books on the table. The ceiling was low, and sagged. A lamp with a green glass shade lit the table. There was no electric light. Donald, the boy of four, was asleep upstairs.

Edwina, Malvolia andMeredith were all exactly alike, like golden greyhounds. Their golden hair was sleek, their fine faces like antelopes, their shoulders still and steady like Zulu women carrying water, and their bodies beneath the shoulders rippled when they moved. They were seventeen, sixteen, and fifteen. Velvet was fourteen. Velvet had short pale hair, large, protruding teeth, a sweet smile and a mouthful of metal.

Mr. Brown was swilling down the slaughterhouse, as Mi Taylor was away for the day. The sound of the hose swished at the wooden partition which separated the slaughterhouse from the sitting room.

"He went beautifully!" said Velvet, and laying down a tiny paper horse on the table she wrenched at the gold band that bound her teeth back and laid it beside the horse.

"Father'll be in in a minute," said Edwina warningly.

"It's going in again directly I hear a sound," said Velvet and sitting down she swept the band into her lap.

"Look at him," she said lovingly, taking up the paper horse. "I must unsaddle him and rub him down." The heads were bent on the lesson books again and Velvettook a tiny bridle of cotton thre ' ads from the horse. Thengoing to a shell-box on the sideboard she brought it tothe table.

Enid Bagnold ( 27 oktober 1889 – 3 maart 1981)

De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

Uit: On Beauty

“One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father:

To: HowardBelsey@fas.Wellington.edu
From: Jeromeabroad@easymail.com
Date: 5 November
Subject:

Hey, Dad – basically I’m just going to keep on keeping on with these mails – I’m no longer expecting you to reply, but I’m still hoping you will, if that makes sense.

Well, I’m really enjoying everything. I work in Monty Kipps’s own office (did you know that he’s actually Sir Monty??), which is in the Green Park area. It’s me and a Cornish girl called Emily. She’s cool. There’re also three more yank interns downstairs (one from Boston!), so I feel pretty much at home. I’m a kind of an intern with the duties of a PA – organizing lunches, filing, talking to people on the phone, that sort of thing. Monty’s work is much more than just the academic stuff: he’s involved with the Race Commission, and he has Church charities in Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, etc. – he keeps me really busy. Because it’s such a small set-up, I get to work closely with him – and of course I’m living with the family now, which is like being completely integrated into something new. Ah, the family. You didn’t respond, so I’m imagining your reaction (not too hard to imagine . . .). The truth is, it was really just the most convenient option at the time. And they were totally kind to offer – I was being evicted from the ‘bedsit’ place in Marylebone. The Kippses aren’t under any obligation to me, but they asked and I accepted – gratefully. I’ve been in their place a week now, and still no mention of any rent, which should tell you something. I know you want me to tell you it’s a nightmare, but I can’t – I love living here. It’s a different universe. The house is just wow – early Victorian, a ‘terrace’ – unassuming-looking outside but massive inside – but there’s still a kind of humility that really appeals to me – almost everything white, and a lot of handmade things, and quilts and dark wood shelves and cornices and this four-storey staircase – and in the whole place there’s only one television, which is in the basement anyway, just so Monty can keep abreast of news stuff, and some of the things he does on the television – but that’s it. I think of it as the negativized image of our house sometimes . . . It’s in this bit of North London called ‘Kilburn’, which sounds bucolic, but boy oh boy is not bucolic in the least, except for this street we live on off the ‘high road’, and it’s suddenly like you can’t hear a thing and you can just sit in the yard in the shadow of this huge tree – eighty feet tall and ivy-ed all up the trunk . . . reading and feeling like you’re in a novel . . . Fall’s different here – much less intense and trees balder earlier – everything more melancholy somehow.”

De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

Stoet

Langzaam trekt een blanke stoet door d'heemlen.
Jesus eerst, der maagden koning, 't aanzicht
lijk de zonne glanzend en de kleedren
lijk de sneeuw, en hunne koninginne,
de Onbevlekte met haar sterrenkrone.
Zeven englen volgen, blank in 't slepend
koorkleed, houdend hare wijd ontvouwde
hemelsblauwe goudgesternde mantel,
dragend hare blauwe lelievane.
Duizend, duizend, duizend maagden volgen,
sneeuwblank door de nevelige sluiers,
dragend in de hand de blanke lelie,
zingend zoete koren door de heemlen,
volgend waar hij gaat der maagden koning
en hunne onbevlekte koninginne.

Dichterliefde

Mijne tranen baren bloemen
lijk lentelach over de wei,
en mijne zuchten worden
een nachtegalenrei.

En wils du mi wederlieven,
voor di bloem op bloemken ontschiet,
en voor dijne venster zal klingen*
der nachtegalen lied.

Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 – 23 juni 1880)

Standbeeld in Roeselaere 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2008.

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Frances Ann "Fran" Lebowitz werd geboren op 27 oktober 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey.

De Iraanse schrijver en filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh werd geboren op 27 oktober 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran.

De Poolse schrijver Kazimierz Brandys werd geboren op 27 oktober 1916 in Lodz.

De Engelse dichter Dylan Thomas werd geboren op 27 oktober 1914 in Swansea in Wales. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006 en ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2007.

A Process in the Weather of the Heart

A process in the weather of the heart

Turns damp to dry; the golden shot

Storms in the freezing tomb.

A weather in the quarter of the veins

Turns night to day; blood in their suns

Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns

The bones of blindness; and the womb

Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of the eye

Is half its light; the fathomed sea

Breaks on unangled land.

The seed that makes a forest of the loin

Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,

Slow in a sleeping wind.

A weather in the flesh and bone

Is damp and dry; the quick and dead

Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world

Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child

Sits in their double shade.

A process blows the moon into the sun,

Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;

And the heart gives up its dead.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Love In the Asylum

A stranger has come

To share my room in the house not right in the head,

A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.

Strait in the mazed bed

She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,

At large as the dead,

Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed

Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,

Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust

Yet raves at her will

On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last

I may without fail

Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Dylan Thomas (27 oktober 1914 – 9 november 1953)

De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006.

Dark House

This is a dark house, very big.

I made it myself,

Cell by cell from a quiet corner,

Chewing at the grey paper,

Oozing the glue drops,

Whistling, wiggling my ears,

Thinking of something else.

It has so many cellars,

Such eelish delvings!

U an round as an owl,

I see by my own light.

Any day I may litter puppies

Or mother a horse. My belly moves.

I must make more maps.

These marrowy tunnels!

Moley-handed, I eat my way.

All-mouth licks up the bushes

And the pots of meat.

He lives in an old well,

A stoney hole. He's to blame.

He's a fat sort.

Pebble smells, turnipy chambers.

Small nostrils are breathing.

Little humble loves!

Footlings, boneless as noses,

It is warm and tolerable

In the bowel of the root.

Here's a cuddly mother.

Gigolo

Pocket watch, I tick well.

The streets are lizardy crevices

Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.

It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,

A palace of velvet

With windows of mirrors.

There one is safe,

There are no family photographs,

No rings through the nose, no cries.

Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women

Gulp at my bulk

And I, in my snazzy blacks,

Mill a litter of breasts like jellyfish.

To nourish

The cellos of moans I eat eggs -

Eggs and fish, the essentials,

The aphrodisiac squid.

My mouth sags,

The mouth of Christ

When my engine reaches the end of it.

The tattle of my

Gold joints, my way of turning

Bitches to ripples of silver

Rolls out a carpet, a hush.

And there is no end, no end of it.

I shall never grow old. New oysters

Shriek in the sea and I

Glitter like Fontainebleau

Gratified,

All the fall of water and eye

Over whose pool I tenderly

Lean and see me.

Night Shift

It was not a heart, beating.

That muted boom, that clangor

Far off, not blood in the ears

Drumming up and fever

To impose on the evening.

The noise came from outside:

A metal detonating

Native, evidently, to

These stilled suburbs nobody

Startled at it, though the sound

Shook the ground with its pounding.

It took a root at my coming

Till the thudding shource, exposed,

Counfounded in wept guesswork:

Framed in windows of Main Street's

Silver factory, immense

Hammers hoisted, wheels turning,

Stalled, let fall their vertical

Tonnage of metal and wood;

Stunned in marrow. Men in white

Undershirts circled, tending

Without stop those greased machines,

Tending, without stop, the blunt

Indefatigable fact.

Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)

De Iraanse schrijver en filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh werd geboren op 27 oktober 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran. Hij studeerde regie aan de academie voor film en televisie in Teheran. In1983 vluchtte hij , zoals velen, uit zijn vaderland. Tegenwoordig woont hij in Nederland. Hij maakte onder meer tv-documentaires voor de RVU en de hartverscheurende speelfilm 'The guests of Hotel Astoria', over Iraanse vluchtelingen. Ook gaf hij cursussen over film.o.a. aan de Hollins University in Virginia en Leeds Metropolitan University.  Bittere zomer' was het eerste boek van hem dat in het Nederlands verscheen (hij schreef het in het Farsi).

Werk o.a.: "My Great Secret" 1995, "Bitter Summer", 1996, "Confidential Travelogue", 1997, “The Private Album”, 1999

Uit: Bittere Zomer (Vertaald door Gert J.J. de Vries)

“Ik had net de maaltijd op en dacht erover me in het bassin te gaan baden alvorens naar Foezijeh te vertrekken. Op dat moment hoorde ik iemand op de deur kloppen.

Firoez. Ik was zo stomverbaasd dat hij er verlegen van werd. Ik wist wel dat hij mijn adres had en wist dat ik alleen thuis was, maar ik had hem nooit hier aan de deur verwacht. Hij zei dat hij vannacht bij me kon blijven logeren, dat zijn vader dat goedgevonden had. Ik wist niet zeker, of dat helemaal klopte, maar hij had zo’n uitstraling van eerlijkheid en hij kon zo smekend kijken, dat ik hem wel moest geloven. Ik zag hem naar het shirt kijken dat ik in mijn hand hield, en voordat hij iets kon vragen vertelde ik dat ik op het punt stond om te gaan baden. Hij wierp een blik op het bassin van twee bij twee meter en zei:

“Als er plaats is kom ik er ook in!”

Ik gaf hem een speelse klap achter in zijn nek en sprong toen in mijn onderbroek het water in. Waarop hij zijn kleren ook op de houten ligbank legde en op de rand van het bassin ging zitten. Hij leek te kleumen van de kou. Ik spatte wat water op zijn bovenlichaam en trol hem aan zijn hand de vijver in. Om hem te plagen duwde ik hem een paar keer kopje-onder en liet hem dan weer gaan. Hij raakte buiten adem, maar moest toch lachen. Op zijn beurt probeerde hij mij onder water te krijgen, maar had daar de kracht niet voor. Totdat ik meegaf en me kopje-onder liet gaan. Zijn armen waren onder me weggegleden, maar met één hand hield hij me stevig achter in mijn nek omklemd en duwde hij mijn hoofd naar beneden. Na enkele keren hurkte ik onverhoeds neer in het water en trok de argeloze Firoez naar beneden. Ik had zelf mijn gezicht boven water en liet hem pas los toen ik hem hoorde rochelen. Hij kwam met rode ogen omhoog, buiten adem maar nog steeds lachend: “Hé, je hebt me zowat verzopen!”

Reza Allamehzadeh (Sari, 27 oktober 1943)

De Egyptische schrijfster, gynaecologe, moslimfeministe en politiek activiste Nawal el Saadawi werd geboren in Kafr Tahla op 27 oktober 1931. Haar werk bevat toneelstukken, romans en werken over de religieus opgelegde plichten van vrouwen in Abrahamitische religies (in het bijzonder de islam), geweld tegen vrouwen en mensenrechtenactivisten en feminisme. El Saadawi ging geneeskunde studeren aan de Universiteit van Caïro en voltooide deze studie in 1955. Naderhand bereikte ze de status van Directeur Openbare gezondheid op het Ministerie van Gezondheid. In die functie ontmoette ze ook haar derde echtgenoot, Sherif Hetata, met wie ze de kantoorruimte deelde. Hetata had 13 jaar gevangenschap achter de rug vanwege zijn politieke stellingname. Ook Nawal bleef niet verstoken van moeilijkheden vanwege haar kritiek op misstanden in de Egyptische samenleving: ze werd in 1972 ontslagen bij het Ministerie vanwege haar politieke activiteiten en haar boek "Women and sex".

Omdat ze al sinds 1982 doodsbedreigingen kreeg van islamistische fundamentalisten verliet El Saadawi in 1991 Egypte en verhuisde naar de Amerikaanse staat North Carolina. Ze gaf in de Verenigde Staten college aan de Duke University te Durham en aan de Washington State University te Pullman in de staat Washington. In 1996 keerde ze terug naar Egypte en pakte haar politiek activisme daar weer op. Ze wilde zich kandidaat stellen voor de eerste vrije presidentiële verkiezingen in 2005, maar trok zich terug vanwege de zware voorwaarden die gesteld werden. Eind februari 2007, terwijl ze in Brussel verbleef, werd bekend dat sjeik Mohammed Seyed Tantawi van de Al-Azhar Universiteit een fatwa en de doodstraf op grond van de sharia over haar heeft uitgesproken wegens geloofsafval, vanwege een in Egypte gepubliceerd toneelstuk dat aldaar inmiddels een verboden boek geworden is.

Uit: The Hidden Face of Eve

“lf way between wakefulness and sleep, with the rosy dreams of childhood flitting by, like gentle fairies in quick succession. I felt something move under the blankets, something like a huge hand, cold and rough, fumbling over my body, as though looking for something. Almost simultaneously another hand, as cold and as rough and as big as the first one, was clapped over my mouth, to prevent me from screaming. They carried me to the bathroom. I do not know how many of them there were, nor do I remember their faces, or whether they were men or women. The world to me seemed enveloped in a dark fog winch prevented me from seeing. Or perhaps they put 4ome kind of a cover over my eyes. All I remember is that I was frightened and that there were many of them, and that something hke an iron grasp caught hold of my hand and my arms and my thighs, so that I became unable to resist or even to move. I also remember the icy touch of the bathroom tiles under my naked body, and unknown voices and humming sounds interrupted now and again by a rasping metallic sound which reminded me of the butcher when he used to sharpen his knife before daughtering a sheep for the Eid' . My blood was frozen in my veins. It looked to me as though some thieves had broken into my room and kidnapped me ftom my bed. They were getting ready to cut my throat which was always what happened with disobedient girls fike myself in the stories that my old rural grandmother was so fond of telling me. I strained my ears trying to catch the rasp of the metallic sound. The moment it ceased, it was as though my heart stopped beating with it. I was unable to see, and somehow my breathing seemed also to have stopped. Yet I imagined the thing that was making the rasping sound coming closer and closer to me. Somehow it was not approac@ng my neck as I had expected but another part of my body. Somewhere below my belly, as though seeking something buried between my thighs. At that very moment I realized that my thighs had been pulled wide apart, and that each of my lower limbs was being held as far away ftom the other as possible, gripped by-steel fingers that never relinquished their pressure. I felt that the rasping knife or blade was heading straight down towards my throat. Then suddenly the sharp metallic edge seemed to drop between my thighs and there cut off a piece of flesh from my body. I screamed with pain despite the tight hand held over my mouth, for the pain was not just a pain, it was like a searing flame that went through my whole body. After a few moments, I saw a red pool of blood around my hips. I did not know what they had cut off from my body, and I did not try to find out. I just wept, and called out to my mother for help. But the worst shock of all was when I looked around and found her standing by my side. Yes, it was her, I could not be mistaken, in flesh and blood, right in the midst of these strangers, talking to them and smiling at them, as though they had not participated in slaughtering her daughter just a few moments ago.”

Nawal el Saadawi (Kafr Tahla, 27 oktober 1931)

De Britse schrijfster Enid Algerine Bagnold werd geboren op 27 oktober 1889 in Rochester, Kent. Zij baarde in 1923 opzien met haar roman The Difficulty of Getting Married. Internationaal het bekendste en succesvolste werk van haar is National Velvet uit 1935. Het kinderboek werd in 1944 verfilmd door Clarance Brown met o.a. Elizabeth Taylor. Bagnold schreef ook vanaf het begin gedichten die in verschillende bloemlezingen werden gepubliceerd.

Uit: THE HAPPY FOREIGNER

"COME in," she said in English, lifting her head and all her mind and spirit out of the pit of the pillow.

Feet came further into the room and a shivering child held a candle in her face. "Halb sechs, Fräulein," it said. But the Fräulein continued to stare at him. He thought she was not yet awake–he could not tell that she was counting countries in her head to find which one she was in–or that she was inclining towards the theory that she was at school in Germany. He was very cold in his shirt and little trousers, and he pulled at her sheets. "Fräulein !" he said again with chattering teeth, and when she nodded more collectedly the little ghost slipped out relieved by the door. "Russian colonel . . . I must get up. Fancy making that boy call me! Why couldn't someone older . . . I must get up."

He had left the electric light burning in her room, but out in the corridor all was black and hushed as she had left it the night before when she had gone to bed. Behind the kitchen door there was a noise of water running in the sink. She opened the door, and there was the wretched child again, still in his shirt, rinsing out her coffee-pot by the light of one candle. Well, since he was doing it . . . Poor child! But she must have her coffee. By the time she was dressed he tapped again and brought in the tray with coffee, bread and jam on it. Setting it down, he looked it over with an anxious face. "Zucker," he said, and disappeared to fetch it. She filled her thermos bottle with the rest of the coffee which she could not finish, and put two of the slices of grey bread into the haversack, then crept downstairs and out into the black street where the gas lamps still burnt and the night sentry still paced up and down in the spectral gloom. Over the river hung a woolly fog, imprisoning the water; but as she crossd the bridge she noticed where its solidity was incomplete and torn, and into the dark water which lay at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters and between the cobble stones defied her, and her hands ached with cold though she put them in turn right through her blouse against her heart to warm them as she ran. Fetching her car she drove to the Hôtel Royal, and settled down to wait.”

Enid Bagnold ( 27 oktober 1889 – 3 maart 1981)

De Engelse schrijfster Zadie Smith werd geboren op 27 oktober 1975 en woonde in de Londense gemeente Brent bij haar Engelse vader Harvey Smith en zijn tweede vrouw Yvonne McLean, van Jamaicaanse afkomst. Op 14-jarige leeftijd veranderde Sadie haar naam in Zadie.Tijdens haar universitaire opleiding in Engelstalige literatuur aan de universiteit van Cambridge, publiceerde Zadie Smith een aantal korte verhalen in de May Anthologies. Op basis hiervan boden diverse geïnteresseerde uitgevers haar een contract aan. Haar eerste roman, White Teeth, werkte ze af tijdens haar laatste jaar aan de universiteit. Eenmaal gepubliceerd, werd het onmiddellijk een bestseller. Het werd internationaal erkend als een schitterend debuut en viel meer dan eens in de prijzen Haar derde roman, On Beauty, werd gepubliceerd in september 2005 en werd voorgedragen voor de Man Booker Prize. In 2006 won On Beauty de Orange Prize for Fiction.

Uit: White Teeth

“Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage license (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him. A little green light flashed in his eye, signaling a right turn he had resolved never to make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact it was a New Year's resolution.

But even as his breathing became spasmodic and his lights dimmed, Archie was aware that Cricklewood Broadway would seem a strange choice. Strange to the first person to notice his slumped figure through the windscreen, strange to the policemen who would file the report, to the local journalist called upon to write fifty words, to the next of kin who would read them. Squeezed between an almighty concrete cinema complex at one end and a giant intersection at the other, Cricklewood was no kind of place. It was not a place a man came to die. It was a place a man came in order to go other places via the A41. But Archie Jones didn't want to die in some pleasant, distant woodland, or on a cliff edge fringed with delicate heather. The way Archie saw it, country people should die in the country and city people should die in the city. Only proper. In death as he was in life and all that. It made sense that Archibald should die on this nasty urban street where he had ended up, living alone at the age of forty-seven, in a one-bedroom flat above a deserted chip shop. He wasn't the type to make elaborate plans -- suicide notes and funeral instructions -- he wasn't the type for anything fancy. All he asked for was a bit of silence, a bit of shush so he could concentrate. He wanted it to be perfectly quiet and still, like the inside of an empty confessional box or the moment in the brain between thought and speech. He wanted to do it before the shops opened.

Zadie Smith (Londen, 27 oktober 1975)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Frances Ann "Fran" Lebowitz werd geboren op 27 oktober 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey. Na van school te zijn gestuurd had zij verschillende baantjes totdat Andy Warhol haar vroeg voor een column in Interview. Haar eerste boek was een verzameling essays onder de titel Metropolitan Life en verscheen in 1978. In 1981 volgde Social Studies. Lebowitz staat bekend om haar sardonische commentaar op de Amerikaanse “way of life”.

Uit: Progress

“So then, let us consider the likelihood that the empty pews were less the result of a lesser fear of God than they were an indication of a greater fear of the godless. In other words, let us suppose that the Red Scare was enough scare and that the whole thing was, as might well have been suspected, a Communist plot.

And let us assume that a citizenry fully occupied with the questions of the day, a citizenry busy leading and misleading the way—marching on Washington, appearing before Senate subcommittees, putting fluoride in the drinking water, and barring children from the schoolhouse door—was a citizenry too engaged by the demands of democracy to be lured by the commands of religion.

And let us lament that there is no longer a need to imagine the consequences of the failure of imagination that is the consequence of a religiosity so pervasive that it has replaced that which is possible with that which is impossible.

And let us admit that where there is less religion there is more progress. And that this has been true not only throughout the entire history of the whole world but even in the United States of America. And let us understand that if you do not have a greater belief in democracy than you do in your religion you will eventually have less democracy. And that you may even lose your religion, because, as it turns out, the only people who are really tolerant of other people's religions are people who are really not that religious.”

Fran Lebowitz (Morristown, 27 oktober 1950)

De Poolse schrijver Kazimierz Brandys werd geboren op 27 oktober 1916 in Lodz. Hij studeerde rechten in Warschau en debuteerde in 1935 als theatercriticus. Van 1945 tot 1950 was hij verbonden aan het tijdschrift "Kuźnica"en van 1956 tot 1969 aan "Nowa Kultura". Hij doceerde ook slavische literatuur aan de Sorbonne in Parijs. Vanaf 1978 woonde hij buiten Polen.

Uit:  Warschauer Tagebuch

“In Polen äußert sich die Genugtuung zumeist in einem Scherz. Als Wałęsa den Streik in Danzig für beendet erklärte, sagte er zu den Werftarbeitern: "Und jetzt geht jeder nach Hause und guckt nach, ob nicht etwas weg- oder dazugekommen ist, und dann ab in die Heia."
Diese Worte werden sicherlich nicht in die Geschichte eingehen. Sie sollten es aber. In ihnen äußert sich ein freundlicher, unprätentiöser Charakterzug der Polen, der die Ergriffenheit lieber hinter einem Witz versteckt. Ich kenne kein zweites Land, in dem Führer der Arbeiterklasse nach einem großen, siegreichen Streik Tausenden seiner Mitkämpfer die Worte hinwirft: "Ab in die Heia."

Kazimierz Brandys (27 oktober 1916 – 11 maart 2000)

De Belgische dichter en schrijver Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2006.

REGENDAG

Och hoe droevig sleept de dag. Betrokken

ligt de lucht met wolken grijs en grauw,

't stuifreînt, en die hooge boomen schokken

hunne kruinen, en vol vreemde rouw

ruischen zij, ontblaadrend, droeve zangen.

Lijk des avonds in het woud een dolend kind,

daar beneden door de donkre gangen

aaklig schreeuwt en huilt de wilde wind.

Sombre wolken door mijn ziel ook zweven,

nevelig betrekt mijn zonneglans.

Houd u sterk, o jongling, dat is 't leven.

Weze uw droefheid lijk uw vreugd -- eens mans.

DICHTERLIEFDE

naar Heyne op musiik van Schumann

Mijne tranen baren bloemen

    lijk lentelach over de wei,

en mijne zuchten worden

    een nachtegalenrei.

En wils du mi wederlieven,

    voor di bloem op bloemken ontschiet,

en voor dijne venster zal klingen

    der nachtegalen lied.

Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 – 23 juni 1880)

Albrecht Rodenbach werd geboren te Roeselare op 27 oktober 1856. Hij stamde uit een gegoede burgerfamilie die afkomstig was uit Andernach in het Duitse Rijnland. Na de lagere school volgt hij de leergangen in het Klein Seminarie. Hier wordt zijn Vlaamsgezindheid gewekt, vooral onder impuls van Hugo Verriest die een diepgaande invloed op hem heeft. Dit leidt onvermijdelijk in het schooljaar 1874-75 tot een conflict tussen leerlingen van Verriests Poësisklas en de Fransgezinde directeur. Op het jaarlijkse schoolfeest weigerden de leerlingen Franse liederen te zingen en zongen zij het door Rodenbach getoondichte "Nu het lied der Vlaamse zonen" met de gekende strijdkreet "Vliegt de blauwvoet, storm op zee". Deze actie kreeg de naam "De grote stooringe" en was de start van de zogenaamde "Blauwvoeterie". Dit weerhield Rodenbach niet om toch nog primus in de Retorica te worden. Na het voleindigen in 1876 van zijn middelbare studies ging hij dan in Leuven rechten studeren. Mede door zijn toedoen worden in 1877 twee algemene studentenlanddagen bijeengeroepen te Gent. Met zijn Leuvense studiegenoten richtte hij "Het Algemeen Vlaams Studentenverbond" op. Hun doelstellingen waren de vernederlandsing van het onderwijs en gelijke rechten voor de Vlamingen. Rodenbach stierf in Roeselare op 23 juni 1880 aan de tering, 23 jaar oud.

ZONDAG

Liedeken op duitsche wijze.

Over dorp en over veld
't helderklingend kloksken schelt;
oud en jong, de dorpelingen
naadren langs de wegelingen,
ieder op zijn best gepint,
    vro en welgezind.

Wierookwalm en orgelklang,
stille bede en kinderzang
smelten in harmonisch stijgen
t' midden een godvruchtig zwijgen,
en eenvoudig wordt aanhoord
    Gods eenvoudig Woord.

Later zit de mannenschaar
in der linden schaûw te gaâr,
en zij klappen, smooren, drinken;
bachten d'hage wederklinken
vreugdekreten bij 't gerol
    der geschoten bol.

Door de reine blauwe lucht
rijst er menig blij gerucht;
kinderreien zingen klingen
op het hof in bonte kringen
onder breeden eikentrans
    lustig aan den dans.

Over dorp en over veld
de avond spreidt, de beêklok schelt;
de avond heeft zijn vreugden mede
voor des braven landmans stede:
ziel te vreden, hert gerust,
    stillen avondlust.

Albrecht Rodenbach (27 oktober 1856 – 23 juni 1880)

 

Dylan Thomas werd geboren op 27 oktober 1914 in Swansea in Wales. Dylan Thomas gaat op zijn elfde naar de middelbare school, waar zijn passie voor poëzie en literatuur zich duidelijk manifesteerde. Na enkele maanden publiceert de schoolkrant zijn eerste gedicht The Song of the Mischievous Dog. Op zijn twaalfde publiceert The Western Mail het gedicht His Requiem van Thomas. Later blijkt dit gedicht gewoon plagiaat te zijn.

Na zijn schooltijd (in 1931) gaat hij voor The South Wales Daily Post werken, een plaatselijke krant. Daar is hij achtereenvolgens corrector, reporter en free-lance medewerker. Intussen sluit hij ook vriendschap met de dichter Vernon Watkins, met wie hij de rest van zijn leven een literaire relatie zal blijven behouden. Thomas toont zich in die tijd ook een non-conformist: hij drinkt veel te veel, houdt zich niet aan afspraken, kleedt zich als een bohémien... Stuk voor stuk zaken die volgens hem beantwoorden aan het beeld van een dichter. Dylan Thomas schrijft verder en af en toe worden ook gedichten van hem gepubliceerd. Eind 1933 en begin 1934 schrijft hij zo'n 30 gedichten waarvan er 13 zijn eerste bundel halen.

In 1934 verschijnt die eerste dichtbundel, 18 Poems, die in literaire kringen op veel bijval kan rekenen. Intussen huurt hij een kamer in Londen, waar hij zijn losse levenswandel verder zet en zich ontpopt tot een zwaar drinker. Zijn tweede bundel, 25 Poems, die ook een pak gedichten bevat uit de productieve periode 1933-1934, verschijnt in 1936, terwijl Thomas in armoede in London en Wales leeft. De terugkerende thema's in zijn poëzie zijn leven, dood, nostalgie en het verlies van onschuld.

 

Especially when the October wind

 

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

 

 

Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred

 

When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor.
Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun
And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire
When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang.
Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart.
The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound
Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage.
O keep his bones away from the common cart,
The morning is flying on the wings of his age
And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.

 

 

 

Dylan Thomas (27 oktober 1914 – 9 november 1953)

 

Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Sylvia leed gedurende haar gehele volwassen leven aan een ernstige vorm van bipolaire stoornis. In 1950 werd ze met een beurs toegelaten tot Smith College, maar al in haar eerste studiejaar deed ze een zelfmoordpoging. Ze kwam onder behandeling van een psychiatrische instelling (McLean Hospital) en leek goed te herstellen. In 1955 studeerde ze cum laude af.

Plath kreeg opnieuw een beurs, ditmaal om inCambridge te gaan studeren. Ook daar ging ze door met het schrijven van gedichten, die af en toe in de studentenkrant Varsity werden gepubliceerd. In Cambridge ontmoette ze de Engelse dichter Ted Hughes, met wie ze trouwde op 16 juni 1956. Plath en Hughes woonden van juli 1957 tot oktober 1959 in de Verenigde Staten, waar Plath les gaf aan Smith College. In Boston woonde Plath lezingen van Robert Lowell bij, die van grote invloed op haar werk zouden zijn.

Toen Sylvia zwanger was verhuisde het echtpaar terug naar het Verenigd Koninkrijk.

Ze woonden een tijdje in Londen en streken vervolgens neer in North Tawton, een stadje in Devon. Haar eerste dichtbundel, The Colossus, kwam in 1960 in Engeland uit. In februari 1961 kreeg ze een miskraam, waarnaar ze in een aantal gedichten verwees. Door echtelijke ruzies, vooral naar aanleiding van Hughes' affaire met dichteres Assia Wevill, leefden Ted en Sylvia na de geboorte van hun eerste kind bijna twee jaar gescheiden.

Plath keerde met haar kinderen, Frieda en Nicholas, terug naar Londen. Ze huurde een woning in een appartementencomplex waar ook William Butler Yeats ooit woonde. Plath was hier erg blij mee en beschouwde het als een goed voorteken toen ze haar scheidingsprocedure inzette. De winter van 1962/1963 was zeer streng en Sylvia werd ziek. Op 11 februari 1963 verstikte ze zichzelf met het gas van haar oven. Voordien had ze nog eten en melk voor haar kinderen klaargezet.

 

Bitter Strawberries

 

All morning in the strawberry field
They talked about the Russians.
Squatted down between the rows
We listened.
We heard the head woman say,
'Bomb them off the map.'

Horseflies buzzed, paused and stung.
And the taste of strawberries
Turned thick and sour.

Mary said slowly, 'I've got a fella
Old enough to go.
If anything should happen...'

The sky was high and blue.
Two children laughed at tag
In the tall grass,
Leaping awkward and long-legged
Across the rutted road.
The fields were full of bronzed young men
Hoeing lettuce, weeding celery.

'The draft is passed,' the woman said.
'We ought to have bombed them long ago.'
'Don't,' pleaded the little girl
With blond braids.

Her blue eyes swam with vague terror.
She added petishly, 'I can't see why
You're always talking this way...'
'Oh, stop worrying, Nelda,'
Snapped the woman sharply.
She stood up, a thin commanding figure
In faded dungarees.
Businesslike she asked us, 'How many quarts?'
She recorded the total in her notebook,
And we all turned back to picking.

Kneeling over the rows,
We reached among the leaves
With quick practiced hands,
Cupping the berry protectively before
Snapping off the stem
Between thumb and forefinger.

 

Soliloquy of the Solipsist

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott any color and forbid any flower
To be.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All you beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

 

 

 

Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)