Mitt senaste inlägg handlade om mina egna dagböcker, nu är det dags för andras.
Del II: Andras dagböcker
När jag var på Nya Zeeland 2003 köpte jag en orimligt tjock (åtminstone för en backpacker) bok i en fin bokhandel i stadsdelen Mount Eden, Auckland.
Boken heter: The Assassin’s Cloak – An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists och är alltså en samling med utdrag från vitt skilda människors dagböcker.
Det finaste är att den är uppdelad på datum. Så varje dag kan man läsa vad vitt skilda människor från olika århundranden har skrivit i sina dagböcker, just den dagen.
Här är några smakprov från den 8:e april. (Jag testade att köra styckena i Google Översätt, och de blev åtminstone begripliga, om det är någon som vill läsa på svenska i stället.)
8 april 1847 6 a.m.
Hope is bad for a happy man and good for an unhappy one. Although I have gained a lot since I began to study myself, I am still very dissatisfied with myself. The more progress you make in self-improvement, the more you see the faults in yourself, and Socrates rightly said that the highest state of a man’s perfection is the knowledge that he knows nothing.
Leo Tolstoy
8 april 1871
Still dreadful news from Paris. The Commune have everything their own way, and they go on quite as in the days of the old Revolution in the last century, though they have not yet proceeded to commit allt the same horrors. They have however, thrown priests into prison, etc. They have burnt the guillotine and shoot people instead. I am so glad I saw Paris once more, though I should not care to do so again.
Queen Victoria
8 april 1941
With the Führer. He also admires the courage of the Greeks in particular. Perhaps there is still a touch of the old Hellenic strain in them. He forbids the bombing of Athens. This is right and noble of him. Rome and Athens are his meccas. (…)
The Führer cannot relate to the Gothic mind. He hates gloom and brooding mysticism. He wants clarity, light, beauty. And these are the ideals of life in our time. In this respect, the Führer is a totally modern man.
Josef Goebbels
8 april 1976 (during the filming of Apocalypse Now)
Last night Francis had a birthday party on the beach across from the set. About three hundred people were invited, the cast, crew and the American and Vietnamese extras and some townspeople. Hundreds of pounds of hamburger and hot dogs were shipped from San Fransisco. (…) The birthday cake was six feet by eight feet. It was made of twelve sheet cakes iced together. Two men decorated it in the icing. They planted paper palm trees, little cardboard huts and a bridge to look like the set. They placed plastic helicopters, boats, soldiers, flags, flowers and candles, and letters that spelled ‘Happy Birthday, Francis, Apocalypse Now.’
Eleanor Coppola
8 april 1990 (while rehearsing King Lear)
Went to the memorial service for Ian Charleson. Ian was one of my first students at LAMDA (drama school), the first group I ever taught. An extraordinarily talented boy. I hadn’t seen him for two or three years and was driving down the street one day towards Shepherd’s Bush when suddenly there he was. He had been ill for some time with Aids and I was utterly shocked at how changed he’d become. (…) Unfortunately I was not able to see his last Hamlet but those who did felt it was a most moving performance. (…) When Ian was playing Hamlet he knew he was dying, and with Hamlet’s constant meditations on death the sense of that must have been all the more acute. The closeness of death is something of which I have to remind myself in ‘Lear’.
Brian Cox