Literary Birthdays January 3 – 9

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Sunday January 3

Savitri Bai Phule (b. 1831) – Indian poet, teacher, educator of women

Read about Saviribai Phule:

http://insightyv.com/?p=325

Read one of Savitribai Phule’s poems here:

http://castory.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/rise-to-learn-and-act/

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Monday January 4

Gao Xingjian (b. 1940) – Chinese playwright, novelist, painter; 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature  – The Other Shore (1986)

Read the Wikipedia biography of Gao Xingjian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gao_Xingjian

Read a detailed summary of The Other Shore

http://litsum.com/other-shore/

Read an excerpt from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

http://bit.ly/8Cvf3S

“…as well as serving as a carrier of thought literature must also appeal to the auditory senses. The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person’s existence.”

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Tuesday January 5

Umberto Eco (b. 1932) – Italian novelist, essayist – The Name of the Rose (1980)

Watch Umberto Eco interviewed at the 2009 London Book Fair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWeoJcDv4Kw

Watch Umberto Eco speak about the history of ugliness:

http://videolectures.net/cd07_eco_thu/

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Wednesday January 6

Idris Davies (b. 1905) – Welsh poet

Read these short biographies of Idris Davies

http://www.caerphilly.gov.uk/chronicle/english/diggingdeeper/famousfaces/idrisdavies.htm

http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s2-DAVI-IDR-1905.html

Rhymney Hill

If I should die before I’m old

Before I’m worn and grey

Bury my heart on Rhymney Hill

That I loved in childhood’s day.

Bury my heart in that hour

When the curlew cries and cries

And all the moor is brooding

Beneath the fading skies;

In that hour when the finite

And the infinite are one,

One mystery, one glory

Of earth and setting sun.

http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/large/item/GTJ01715/

Watch Pete Seeger sing The Bells of Rhymney (1963)

Rhymney Rhythms Visualized

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-MxuqE3u0

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Thursday January 7

Shobhaa Dé (b. 1948) – Indian novelist

Read a biography of Shobhaa De here
http://bit.ly/4vgAIa

Read Shobhaa De’s blog

http://shobhaade.blogspot.com

Watch an interview of Shobhaa De

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Friday January 8

Gaston Miron (b. 1928) – French-Canadian poet

Watch Gaston Miron present his poetry at the Theatre Gesu in Montreal (1970)

Recours didactique Mes camarades au long cours de ma jeunesse si je fus le haut-lieu de mon poème maintenant je suis sur la place publique avec les miens et mon poème a pris le mors obscur de nos combats Longtemps je fus ce poète au visage conforme qui frissonnait dans les parallèles de ses pensées qui s’étiolait en rage dans la soie des désespoirs et son coeur raillait la crue des injustices Or je vois nos êtres en détresse dans le siècle je vois notre infériorité et j’ai mal en chacun de nous Aujourd’hui sur la place publique qui murmure j’entends la bête tourner dans nos pas j’entends surgir dans le grand inconscient résineux les tourbillons des abattis de nos colères Toi mon amour tu te tiens droite dans ces jours nous nous aimons d’une force égale à ce qui nous sépare la rance odeur de métal et d’intérêts croulants Tu sais que je peux revenir et rester près de toi ce n’est pas le sang, ni l’anarchie ou la guerre et pourtant je lutte, je te le jure, je lutte parce que je suis en danger de moi-même à toi et tous deux le sommes de nous-mêmes aux autres les poètes de ce temps montent la garde du  monde Car le péril est dans nos poutres, la confusion une brunante dans nos profondeurs et nos surfaces nos consciences sont éparpillées dans les débris de nos miroirs, nos gestes des simulacres de libertésje ne chante plus je pousse la pierre de mon corps Je suis sur la place publique avec les miens la poésie n’a pas à rougir de moi j’ai su qu’une espérance soulevait ce monde jusqu’ici. Gaston Miron, L’Homme rapaillé © Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1970. http://www.francite.net/education/page133.html

Read the Electrodes blog post about Miron’s “Le Damned Canuck”

http://electrodes.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/the-damned-canuck-english-translation-of-a-poem-by-gaston-miron/

We are numerous, silent, rough and roughened
in a fog of raw sorrow
taking pains to nose-dive into the line of misery,
a  fire feeding on our guts
and the head — good lord –
we have a head a little lost at how to revive our two hands,
Oh — we are trapped by frost and extreme weariness

A life consumed by fatigue without results
a life muted, that loves to lament
with eyes of anguish disguised as naive confidence
a retina of pure water in its mountain home
a life always at the edge of air
always at the waterline
of awareness,
a hand pulled away from the world’s door

Ah, ring the jingling bells of your entrails,
laugh and make fun of  the cup of your privilege,
great men, masquerading class, who made  me
the sub-human, suffering grimace of a cro-magnon
the cheap wayman, the cheap workman
the damned Canuck

only the knees, only some halting speech

Here’s another English translation of “The Damned Canuck”

http://bit.ly/7D05my

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Saturday January 9

Hayim Nachman Bialik (b. 1873) – Israeli poet

I Didn’t Win Light in a Windfall

I didn’t win light in a windfall,

nor by deed of a father’s will.

I hewed my light from granite.

I quarried my heart.

In the mine of my heart

a spark hides – not large, but wholly my own.

Neither hired, nor borrowed,

nor stolen – my very own.

Sorrow wields huge hammer blows,

the rock of endurance cracks

blinding my eye with flashes I catch in verse.

They fly from my lines to your breast

to vanish in kindled flame.

While I, with heart’s blood and marrow

pay the price of the blaze.

Read a biography and more poems here

http://bit.ly/6x3PMq

Read the Authors Calendar biography of Bialik

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bialik.htm

Read Bialik’s poem On the Threshold of the House of Prayer/Al Saf Beis HaMidrash in Hebrew

http://www.benyehuda.org/bialik/bia012.html

Read commentary on this poem

http://bit.ly/8yQTaW

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