Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along
Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."
मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"
समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."
G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”
C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."
Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”
सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."
".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."
Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."
Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"
विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."
Friday, February 03, 2023
Dinanath Dalal and Robert McGinnis....Rembrandts of Popular Culture
Monday, January 30, 2023
Cavafy's Below the House (at Miraj)....कुलकर्णी, चाफेकर वाडा , मिरज
जी. ए. कुलकर्णी:
"बेळगाव नावाच्या गावास/ पाऊले जरी दूर भटकत गेली/ तरी तुझ्या जुन्या आठवणींची बुत्ती / सतत जवळ राहिली आहे." (रमलखुणा, १९७५)
Thursday, January 26, 2023
You should see the sun on the Ganges...the City of Light
Kowalski: You should see the sun on the Ganges. It's amazing.
(Lieutenant Matt Kowalski played by George Clooney, Gravity, 2013)
"BANĀRAS is a magnificent city, rising from the western bank of the River Ganges, where the river takes a broad crescent sweep toward the north. There is little in the world to compare with the splendor of Banāras, seen from the river at dawn. The rays of the early-morning sun spread across the river and strike the high-banked face of this city, which Hindus call Kāshī—the Luminous, the City of Light. The temples and shrines, ashrams and pavilions that stretch along the river for over three miles are golden in the early morning. They rise majestic on the high riverbank and cast deep reflections into the waters of the Ganges. Long flights of stone steps called ghāts, reaching like roots into the river, bring thousands of worshippers down to the river to bathe at dawn. In the narrow lanes at the top of these steps moves the unceasing earthly drama of life and death, which Hindus call samsāra. But here, from the perspective of the river, there is a vision of transcendence and liberation, which Hindus call moksha..."
(Diana L. Eck, 'BANARAS: CITY OF LIGHT', 1981)
sunrise over the river Ganga in Varanasi
Sunday, January 22, 2023
'ऑल अबाउट इव्ह', १९५०...How to Walk Around with an Erection for Three Days?
Sam Staggs, 'All About All About Eve: The Complete Behind-The-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made!', 2000:
"...Bette Davis: “The unholy mess of my own life—another divorce, my permanent need for love, my aloneness. Margo Channing was a woman I understood thoroughly. I had hard work to remember I was playing a part.”
Gary Merrill: “Before long we were walking about holding hands, going to the movies.… From simple compassion, my feelings shifted to uncontrollable lust.”
Bette Davis: “The last place I expected to find love was on a movie set.”
Celeste Holm: “It was not a very pretty relationship; they laughed at other people. Bette and Gary formed a kind of cabal, like two kids who had learned to spell a dirty word.”
Bette Davis: “There was one bitch in the cast—Celeste Holm.”
Gary Merrill: “Would Miss Davis like coffee? A cigarette? A sandwich? Someone murdered?”
Bette Davis: “I sensed in Gary my last chance at love and marriage. I wanted these as desperately as ever. I had been an actress first and a woman second.”
Gary Merrill: “I walked around with an erection for three days.”
Bette Davis: “I started falling in love with him when I observed how he could relax in bed all day long for two solid weeks.”
Zsa Zsa Gabor: “There was one bed on the set and every time we came back after lunch, it was obvious that Gary and Bette had been using it during the break.”
Bette Davis: “That bed was for a scene in All About Eve but it was so comfortable that, between shots, the whole cast stretched out on it. Most of us would lie there for a few moments then pop up for cigarettes or something. Not Gary. He just lay there, completely at ease, until his scenes were called.”
Gary Merrill: “We only played two love scenes before I said, ‘Will you marry me?’”
Bette Davis: “I had fused the two men completely—Bill Sampson and Gary Merrill. Margo Channing and Bill Sampson were perfectly matched. I was breaking every one of my rules. I always swore I’d never marry an actor.”..."
Joseph L. Mankiewicz यांचा 'ऑल अबाउट इव्ह', १९५० हा माझा अतिशय आवडता सिनेमा आहे, त्याच्या बद्दल काही माहित नसताना सुद्धा मला तो त्या अनेक कारणांमुळे आवडला होता- दिग्दर्शन, अभिनय, फोटोग्राफी, एडिटिंग ... सगळ्यात वर त्याचा चटपटीतपणा , कथानकाचा वेग ....आणि त्याचा understated eroticism .. सेट वर उदा. काय चालले होते (I walked around with an erection for three days... There was one bed on the set and every time we came back after lunch, it was obvious that Gary and Bette had been using it during the break.) त्याचे प्रतिबिंब सिनेमात पडले आहे...
Bette Davis as Margo Channing, Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, Gary Merrill as Bill Sampson
Thursday, January 19, 2023
रेडिओ राजकन्या... Indira Devi of Kapurthala: Cinema, War, Driving Ambulances, BBC
"Maharajkumari Indira Devi (a.k.a. Princess Indee), born in 1912, was the daughter of Maharaja Paramjit Singh and Maharani Brinda of Kapurthala. By all accounts a spirited, intelligent young woman, she left India for Britain in her early 20s to become a movie star. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, and worked briefly in the movies, narrating a few films.
Monday, January 16, 2023
अभ्यासातील फ्लोरा का अंतिम परीक्षेतली ?...Flora and the Zephyrs
जी. ए. कुलकर्णी : "... ऑर्फियसने उत्कंठेने वाद्य हातात घेतले व स्वर निर्माण करण्यास सुरवात केली... त्यावेळी हातांतील कंकणांचा आवाज करत, आंतरसालीसारख्या कोवळ्या पावलांनी सूर्यप्रकाश सरकवत एक सौन्दर्यवती युवती आली, आणि निर्भर आनंदाने तिने ओंजळभर फुले उचलली..."
(पृष्ठ ५, 'ऑर्फियस', 'पिंगळावेळ', १९७७)
Flora आणि Zephyrs दोन्ही रोमन/ ग्रीक देव. Zephyrs म्हणजे पश्चिम-पवन (मरुत) आणि फ्लोरा (the goddess of the flowering of plants), त्याची पत्नी.
हे चित्र आहे (Copyright The Hopkins Collection 2021) जॉन वॉटरहाऊस यांनी १८९८ साली काढलेले. त्या बद्दल मिळालेली माहिती अशी:
"Flora and the Zephyrs takes its subject from Ovid's Fasti, which is a verse chronicle of the Roman calendar, and which incorporates the mythologies and historical legends of Rome where they can he associated with specific times of the year. Waterhouse's painting shows the moment when Zephyr first set eyes upon and fell in love with Flora, as she gathered flowers in the fields with her maidens and children. He flies down to her, accompanied by his winged companions, and captures her by casting a garland of white flowers around her."
पण या चित्रातील फ्लोरा पेक्षा जॉन वॉटरहाऊस यांनी वरील चित्राच्या तयारीकरता काढलेली फ्लोरा (study of Flora) मला खूप जास्त आवडली.
किती मानवी वाटते, तिच्या चेहऱ्यावर दिसणारी चिंता अगदी परिचयाची.