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."

Monday, February 11, 2008

Marathi Verbivores, 400 Years Old Tukaram तुकाराम Still Feeds Us.

In a classic "The Simpsons" episode, following exchange takes place:

"Lisa: While I was gone I got some really good advice from Paul and Linda McCartney.

Homer: Rock stars. Is there anything they don't know?"

([3F03] Lisa the Vegetarian Written by David S. Cohen, Directed by Mark Kirkland, Original airdate in N.A.: 15-Oct-95)

We are celebrating 400th birth anniversary of Saint Tukaram तुकाराम on February 11, 2008 वसंत पंचमी.

I ask: Is there anything Turkaram doesn’t know. (See my previous posts on Tukaram here.)

Some experts have argued that half of world's languages may become extinct by 2100. A few wonder if Marathi will ever join the list or become ‘only-spoken’ language. The onslaught of English and Hindi is relentless. My son uses a complex Hindi word instead of equivalent Marathi word quite effortlessly.

I feel as long as Bhakti literature of Marathi is doing well and we reinvent Marathi the way young people do, there is no such danger.

See “slang dunk” below to read the kind of words used in Mumbai colleges. They should be part of a standard Marathi dictionary. Are they?

Tukaram reinvented Marathi in 17th century. We all still speak his Marathi.

Among modern writers, B S Mardhekar बा सी मर्ढेकर, Bhau Padhye भाऊ पाध्ये, Namdeo Dhasal नामदेव ढसाळ, Jayant Narlikar जयंत नारळीकर (science), N S Phadke ना सी फडके (Cricket writing), Kumar Gandharva कुमार गंधर्व (music) made laudable efforts in "reinventing" Marathi.

See a related post here.

Steven Pinker recently wrote a book “THE STUFF OF THOUGHT / Language as a Window Into Human Nature”. Jonah Lehrer wrote in its review:
“…Human language is an emanation of the human mind. A thing doesn't care what we call it. Words and their rules don't tell us about the world; they tell us about ourselves…”

Even today Tukaram’s language tells us about ourselves, more effectively than anyone else.

p.s. My dear fantasy: Tukaram’s poems set to jazz tunes of John Coltrane!


Artist: Leo Cullum The New Yorker 25 December 1995

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