“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
—Flannery O'Connor
#BornOnThisDay, Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist and short story writer whose fiction examined developed questions of morality and ethics through her colorful regional characters.
After attending Georgia State College for Women, she pursued her MFA at the State University of Iowa, where she enrolled in the now-famous Iowa Writers Workshop. O’Connor lived in New York and Connecticut before being diagnosed with Lupus and moving back to Georgia in 1951. She and her mother moved to Andalusia, the family farm outside Milledgeville, GA.
At Andalusia, even as she struggled with lupus—the disease that killed her father and would cause her own death at 39—she remained prolific. She routinely wrote every morning until noon and spent her afternoons and evenings tending to her domestic birds or entertaining visitors. Informed by the community surrounding her Georgia home and her Roman Catholic faith, O’Connor’s short fiction is rich with complex anti-heroes and ironic moral turns.
#HappyBirthday #AmericanVoices #FlanneryOconnor
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Physics laureate Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna but said the 17 years he spent in Dublin were “the happiest years of my life”.
He was born in Vienna, where he also attended university. During the 1920s, he worked at several German universities, but left Germany in 1934 because of his opposition to Nazism.
From 1940 he was involved in the development and management of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. His unconventional private life made it difficult to obtain a permanent position. (In addition to his wife, he also lived with another woman.) But despite being socially conservative at the time, intellectuals in Ireland tolerated his alternative lifestyle. Fellow physics laureate Max Born wrote in his autobiography: “His private life seemed strange to bourgeois people like ourselves. But all this does not matter. He was a most lovable person, independent, amusing, temperamental, kind and generous, and he had a most perfect and efficient brain.”
Schrödinger said that Dublin was “the only place in the world where a person like me would be able to live comfortably and without direct obligations, free to follow all his fancies”.
His 'What is Life' lecture series in Dublin inspired his influential book.
Read more about Schrödinger’s remarkable life: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1933/schrodinger/biographical/
感動 191 Dario Fo 說故事 Bernard Jordan 開小差大轟動
"Believe me, this prize belongs to both of us."
Literature laureate Dario Fo's wife, Franca Rame, was an actress who starred in many of his plays. He ended his Nobel Prize lecture by telling the audience how they both discovered he had been awarded the Nobel Prize.
"The day it was announced that I was to be awarded the Nobel Prize I found myself in front of the theatre on Via di Porta Romana in Milan where Franca, together with Giorgio Albertazzi, was performing 'The Devil with Tits'. Suddenly I was surrounded by a throng of reporters, photographers and camera-wielding TV-crews. A passing tram stopped, unexpectedly, the driver stepped out to greet me, then all the passengers stepped out too, they applauded me, and everyone wanted to shake my hand and congratulate me … when at a certain point they all stopped in their tracks and, as with a single voice, shouted “Where’s Franca?”. They began to holler “Francaaa” until, after a little while, she appeared. Discombobulated and moved to tears, she came down to embrace me.
At that moment, as if out of nowhere, a band appeared, playing nothing but wind instruments and drums. It was made up of kids from all parts of the city and, as it happened, they were playing together for the first time. They struck up “Porta Romana bella, Porta Romana” in samba beat. I’ve never heard anything played so out of tune, but it was the most beautiful music Franca and I had ever heard."
Here is a unique image of Dario Fo at the Nobel Prize award ceremony in 1997. Photo from the Lars Åström archive.
#NobelPrize #ceremony #literature
這個老人家獨自闖出老人院，穿過海峽、橫越上千公里，登上新聞頭條，還成為了電影主角。
2014年6月5日，身處英國，人稱「伯尼（Bernie）」的89歲老翁伯納德．喬登（Bernard Jordan，附圖）忽然跟松林老人安養院的護理師提亞哥．孔塞喬（Tiago Conceicao）說他要去一趟法國。提亞哥笑了，他以打趣地口吻對伯尼說：「不然你也帶我一起走吧！」
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沒過多久，伯尼吃完午餐，吻了老婆一下，把護照放在夾克口袋裡，裝滿了兩袋零食點心，就此消失無蹤。所有人都以為他去散步了，但是隨著天色越來越暗，遲遲不見他的蹤跡，院方開始緊張了，尤其伯尼有個習慣，他在晚上八點的時候都會找工作人員對表，但今天卻不見人影。院方趕緊叫了警察協尋，但原本警察也只認為這是一個失智老人走失的尋常案件。
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原來此時的伯尼搭上公車、再轉搭火車、趕上渡輪，已經下榻在法國諾曼第大區的維斯特雷阿姆的一處旅館，好整以暇地準備參與諾曼第登陸七十週年的紀念活動，期待一睹女王和美國總統歐巴馬（Barack Obama）的風采，渾然不知大家都為了找他忙得雞飛狗跳。
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1944年6月6日，由英國、美國為首的15萬同盟國大軍橫渡了英吉利海峽在法國諾曼第登陸，這起行動被後世稱為人類史上最大規模的搶灘登陸戰。這場作戰扭轉了戰局，盟軍得以解放法國，奠定了在西線的勝利基礎。不過這個過程也一樣造成了雙方嚴重的死傷，至少一萬餘人命喪沙場。
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當時在海軍服役的伯尼其實並未成年，為了上戰場謊報了年齡，後來的妻子艾琳（Irene Jordan）則在家鄉等待他的歸來。儘管有電工專業，伯尼在二戰期間都在前線執行任務。他曾在一艘驅逐艦上服役，負責襲擊納粹的U型潛艇。而在諾曼第登陸的當下，他則是負責將裝甲坦克送上海灘的水手之一，任務是必須確保船門打開，如果故障，就要立刻動手搶修。
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在登陸過程中，伯尼親眼目睹了許多同袍當場斃命，為此雖然感到懼怕，但他仍然克盡職責完成任務。在2014年的七十五週年紀念，他當然也不希望錯過機會親自回到戰地悼念喪命的戰友們。不過因為健康考量，院方不願放行，讓伯尼感到相當失望。想想自己畢竟也是「成年人」了，伯尼決定先斬後奏，先溜再說。
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等了好幾個鐘頭，院方終於接到電話，一個年輕的退伍軍人在渡輪上遇到了伯尼，所以主動播電話通報，大家頓時安了心。各大媒體聞之，都覺得這事太有戲：年近九旬的老人為了參加諾曼第登陸的紀念活動而溜出老人院，這事可不是天天有。報紙大字隨之刊出「偉大逃亡者（The Great Escaper」的響亮大字以形容伯尼的驚人之舉。
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儘管伯尼沒有票，他還是混入了諾曼第登陸的紀念活動之中，心滿意足地準備離開，但他卻還不明白自己已經成為舉世焦點，在社群網站上也廣受討論。在6月6日的晚上11點，全球各大媒體機構聞風而至，前往諾曼第的港口卡昂爭相採訪他，船長見狀更公開承諾，伯尼可以獲得終身免費旅行的福利。
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等到伯尼再次回到松林老人安養院時，他得到了前所未有的英雄歡迎，大家揮舞著國旗迎接他，彷彿看見民族英雄。但這個冒險還沒有止歇，他開始得到政界的榮譽認可，生日當天也收到來自全球2500封賀卡。平凡老人一夕間成了公眾人物，伯尼為了送往迎來，休息時間減少了，健康受到影響。
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儘管他信誓旦旦還要出席下次的週年活動，卻事與願違，伯尼在同年12月30日溘然長逝。而他摯愛的妻子艾琳像是追隨著他，在七天後也與世長辭。身後，膝下無子的他們將所有財產共60萬美元（折合約新台幣一千九百萬元）都捐獻給了皇家救生艇協會。
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編劇威廉．艾弗里（William Ivory）讀完伯尼的故事，開始產生了靈感，不過他不想要只是單純放大這段故事的趣味性，他也想要從中找到一些不同的切入點。他想到了他的父親，從皇家空軍退伍之後就罹患了創傷後壓力症候群，不僅經常酗酒，脾氣也變得很差。艾弗里開始著手劇本創作，在他筆下的伯尼，也為戰場往事感到苦惱甚至自責。
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英國導演奧立佛．派克（Oliver Parker）隨後接下了這個劇本，並找來老搭檔米高．肯恩（Michael Caine）與葛蘭黛．傑克森（Glenda Jackson）出演夫婦倆，在2023年完成了《一個人的逃亡 The Great Escaper》。儘管電影做出了戲劇化的處理，但仍然貼近真實的生命肌理，米高．肯恩的表演更是無懈可擊。
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米高．肯恩接演此片時與伯尼同樣為89歲，這位傳奇演員也曾親歷二戰，起初在柏林服役，後來被徵召到朝鮮半島，還曾與中國軍隊交戰過。因此對他而言，出演伯尼一角不需要太多的想像力，這就是他的親身經歷。至於《一個人的逃亡》會不會是他生涯的最後一部電影呢？
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實際上米高．肯恩在接演《一個人的逃亡》之前就已經宣告退休了，而且他拒絕了三次之多。但每一次拒絕的時候，他都會再看一看眼前的劇本，越看越覺得自己深愛這個故事，所以才破例接演。
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既然破例一次，似乎亦為著有可能再次破例？他不願把話說死，米高．肯恩自己確實走路都走不動了，但還是可能會考慮在一部新片中飾演進化論之父查爾斯．達爾文（Charles Darwin）。會不會成真？就讓我們期待吧！
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《一個人的逃亡》
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