I felt there was just one thing Guido claimed
I had no right to give nor he to take;
We being in estrangement, soul from soul:
Till, when I sought help, the Archbishop smiled,
Inquiring into privacies of life,
-- Said I was blameable -- (he stands for God)
Nowise entitled to exemption there.
Then I obeyed, -- as surely had obeyed
Were the injunction "Since your husband bids,
Swallow the burning coal he proffers you!"

Robert Browning. The Ring And The Book (1868-9). Book VII; vv.721ff.


Allerdings muß man Pompilia in Schutz nehmen, war sie doch erst 12, als sie mit Guido Franceschini verheiratet wurde.

[zitiert nach: R.B. The Ring And The Book. Edited by Thomas J. Collins and Richard D. Altick. Broadview Press: Ontario 2001, p. 406]

Et ces champs, ces champs, je les fume aussi; ou plutôt je les fumerais si je ne savais qu'ils s'engraissent d'excrétions. Comme les chiens, les champs mangent de la crotte, c'est la nature. Pouah! La Nature! Pouah! pouah! Heureusement que l'homme n'est pas naturel. Quelle vie d'immondices devrait-on mener si l'on était naturel! Et ces champs rappellent l'homme à sa nature naturelle, ils s'agrippent à lui, le rattrapent, l'abaissent, lui collent le nez dans la boue fétide d'où surgiront les choux. Beuh!

Raymond Queneau, Les Temps mêlés in: R.Q. Oeuvres complètes Vol. II. Romans. Tome I. Gallimard (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade): 2002, p. 1032.

"He was one of those persons who for some reason or other are often interrupted, but whom no force in our blessed galaxy will prevent from completing their sentence, despite new interruptions, of an elemental or poetical nature, the death of his interlocutor ("I was just saying to him, doctor---"), or the entrance of a dragon."

[Vladimir Nabokov. Look At The Harlequins! (1974), in: Novels 1969-1974. Library of America: 1996, p. 634]

man hört eine Comedy-LP vom lange verstorbenen Bruder, spoken word:

"Tom, though dead before the Nazi invasion of Europe, had imagined an occupied England with the youth of a rural school, like the one here just down the road, being indoctrinated by an Erziehungsfeldwebel. Here was the sergeant's voice: 'Ja, mine kids, dere is vun ting ve learn before ve beginnen, and dat is very how do you say it gross. You see de Himmel, de sky up aluft? Dat is high. And you are little, yes? You are littler dan de sky, yes? So you point up at de sky and you say vile you pointing are high littler high littler. Is dat not gut? And ve have a little aitch in it so it become highl hittler. Is dat not beautiful?"

[Anthony Burgess. Earthly Powers (1980) Vintage Books: 2004. p. 648 (=penultima)]

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

So it goes...

"I said to Joyce in a bar in Paris in 1924: 'Well, you gave George Russell an eternal and unbreakable alibi for that afternoon. But I know and he knows that he was not in the National Library.'
'I wouldn't want to call you a liar,' Joyce said, his eyes as cloudy as the ghastly cocktail he had before him (absinthe with kummel in lieu of water), 'but I'd always thought Russell more likely to commit sodomy with a pig than a boy. Ach, the world is full of surprises.'
I liked Jim Joyce but not his demented experiments with language. He threw away the chance of becoming a great novelist in the great tradition of Stendhal. He was always trying to make literature a substitute for religion."

[so der Erzähler Kenneth Toomey, Schriftsteller, in A. Burgess' Earthly Powers (1980) Vintage Books: 2004, p. 70]

πρῶτον γάρ μιν ἰόντα βάλε στῆθος παρὰ μαζὸν
δεξιόν· ἀντικρὺ δὲ δι᾽ ὤμου χάλκεον ἔγχος
ἦλθεν· ὁ δ᾽ ἐν κονίηισι χαμαὶ πέσεν αἴγειρος ὣς
ἥ ῥά τ᾽ ἐν εἱαμενῆι ἕλεος μεγάλοιο πεφύκει
λείη, ἀτάρ τέ οἱ ὄζοι ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτηι πεφύασι·
τὴν μέν θ᾽ ἁρματοπηγὸς ἀνὴρ αἴθωνι σιδήρωι
ἐξέταμ᾽, ὄφρα ἴτυν κάμψηι περικαλλέϊ δίφρωι·
ἣ μέν τ᾽ ἀζομένη κεῖται ποταμοῖο παρ᾽ ὄχθας.


"For as he strode among the foremost he was struck on the right of his chest behind the nipple; and clean through his shoulder went the spear of bronze, and he fell to the ground in the dust like a poplar tree that has grown up in the bottom land of a great marsh, smooth, but from its top grow branches: this a chariot-maker has felled with the gleaming iron so that he may bend a wheel rim for a beautiful chariot, and it lies drying by a river's banks."

[Homer, Ilias, Buch D, Übersetzung der Verse 480ff., in: Homer. Iliad. Books 1-12. With an English Translation by A.T. Murray. Revised by William F. Wyatt. Harvard University Press: 2001, p.199ff. (= Loeb Classical Library 170)]
[Griechischer Text aus der Online-Version der Bibliotheca Augustana]

"Comment, s'écria Léandro Perez, les démons ignorent l'avenir? Assurément, repartit le Diable; les personnes qui se fient à nous là-dessus sont de grandes dupes. C'est ce qui fait que les devins et les devineresses disent tant de sottises, et en font tant faire aux femmes de qualité qui vont les consulter sur les événements futurs."

[Alain-René Le Sage. Le Diable boiteux. Éd. Roger Laufer. Gallimard: 1984, p.38]

[Wie? rief Léandro Perez aus, die Dämonen kennen die Zukunft nicht? Gewiß nicht, entgegnete der Teufel; die Leute die sich uns dort oben anvertrauen sind große Dummköpfe. Das bewirkt auch, daß die Weissager und Weissagerinnen soviel Unsinn reden, und die Damen von Rang soviel Unsinn machen lassen, die zu ihnen kommen, um sie wegen der Zukunft zu konsultieren.]

Die Mutter liest; der Vater geht spazieren.
Die Kinderlein, die treiben sich herum.
Eins reitet, eins spielt Pferd - auf allen Vieren;
Das dritte wirft die ersten beiden um.

"Mama! Der hört nicht auf uns zu sekkieren!"
Schreit Ernst ganz ernst, doch Karli stellt sich dumm.
"Da habt's den Ball, den roten mit den Tieren
Und Ruhe jetzt! Die Leut' drehn sich schon um."

Man spielt: Wirf her! - Zu mir! - Jetzt ich! doch dann
Entkommt der Ball den Kindern und hüpft fort
"Der Ball ist futsch" lacht hell Klein Jonathan.

Wo ist er hin? Sieh da! Mein Gott! Der Ball liegt dort
Beim schwitzenden schnarchenden dicken fetten Mann.
Wer traut sich nun an diesen - fürchterlichen - Ort?