Had he lived, B S Mardhekar (बा. सी. मर्ढेकर) would have turned 100 on Dec 1, 2009.
(btw- Year 2009-10 is rich with centenaries. Watch this space for my favourites Baburao Arnalkar बाबूराव अर्नाळकर, N G Kalelkar ना गो कालेलकर & D K Bedekar दि के बेडेकर to make maiden and Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत & Setu Madhavrao Pagadi सेतु माधवराव पगडी to make one more appearance on this blog.)
Mardhekar has been this blog's favourite.
See previous entries on him here.
My love for him has diminished slightly in last few years.
It's largely because of the late M V Dhond (म वा धोंड).
Although Dhond has done more than any other to interpret Mardhekar for us, he rated him far lower than the Marathi saint poets. On phone with me, Dhond was almost dismissive of Mardhekar when I spoke reverently about him.
W H Auden and T S Eliot, Mardhekar's idols, were great poets of 20th century. He too was a very good poet but greatness certainly eluded him.
I am not complaining though. I am happy with his 'shadja'(षड्ज) that is lower but smiling.
अस्थाईवर पुन्हा परतलों,
चुकून गेला पहा अंतरा;
ढिल्या गळ्यावर षड्ज बांधणें
अतां खालचा परंतु हंसरा.
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."
14 comments:
Several Marathi readers do not understand poems of late Shri. B.S.Mardhekar, head or tail despite professors like Smt.Vijaya Rajyadhyaksh try to interpet them.Recently poet Shri.Manohar Naik from Goa has written a voluminous book, "Mrugajalaachyaa Laataa", critisizing the book by her.Loksatta, a Marathi daily made a special Sunday supplement on Mardhekar but did not mention about Naik's book. I think you may read this book by Naik before praising B.S.
Mangesh Nabar
Hey Aniruddha,
So nice to see your blog. I am Mardhekar's great-grand daughter and was really pleased to see that he's one of your favorites. My email id is navmugdha@gmail.com. Would you care to drop a word there? Thanks in advance!
- Mugdha
Thanks for the info Mangesh.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks Mugdha.
So internet brought your great-grandpa, you and I together?
Your ggpa was fascinated by "yellow aerials" on roof-tops when he composed: "बन बांबूंचे पिवळया गातें
आकाशांतिल अधोरेखितें;..." (I am told radio aerials back then used to be yellow.)
I often wonder what he would say about internet.
तुमचा ब्लॉग फारच कंटेंट रिच आहे.
मर्ढेकरांच्या कविता शोधता शोधता मी येथे आलो.
मला त्यांच्या कविता नीट उमजत नाहीत. But I want to learn how to appreciate it. उदहरणार्थ ह्या चार ओळी...
गणपत वाणी बिडी बापडा
पितांपितांना मरून गेला;
एक मागता डोळे दोन
देव देतसे जन्मांधाला!
अख्या कवितेत त्यांनी गणपत वाण्याचे रसहीन जीवन वर्णिले आहे. ह्या शेवटच्य ओळींचा कही संबंध लागत नाही.
I will be grateful if you could shed some light on it.
:)
Keep writing...
Abhinav
Thanks Abhinav.
Every good poem has 1000 faces. Therefore, its 'meaning' is always subjective.
We are all Ganpat-vani's. Buddha has said: life is suffering. Vani may have asked god for something mundane. But in death, in his release from the misery of life, perhaps he received his ultimate blessing!
Thanks Anirudha for that wonderful insight.
Hooked on to your blog. Keep writing. :)
Abhinav
Thanks Abhinav.
There are some excellent books in Marathi on the art of appreciation.
I recommend following authors: Vinoba Bhave, D G Godse, Durga Bhagwat, M V Dhond, Ashok Shahane, Vilas Sarang, Vasant Sarwate.
For Mardhekar, read M V Dhond's Tarīhi Yeto Wasa Phulānnā (Rajhans Prakashan, 1999)
And, I clumsily forgot it, Dilip Chitre.
Yeah.. I have seen Vinoba Bhave and D G Godse's name coming up quite a few times in recent posts.
My information on Vinoba Bhave was limited to his books on Bhagwad Gita.
Tarihi Yeto Vaas Phulanna is my next purchase :)
Thanks and Regards,
Abhinav
Yeah.. I have seen Vinoba Bhave and D G Godse's name coming up quite a few times in recent posts.
My information on Vinoba Bhave was limited to his books on Bhagwad Gita.
Tarihi Yeto Vaas Phulanna is my next purchase :)
Thanks and Regards,
Abhinav
No one else has written in Marathi on Indian poet saints- and not just Marathi speaking ones- as well as Vinoba.
And our poet saints are among the best artists humanity produced since the start of the history.
Dear Aniruddha,
I have been reading with deep interest all of your comments on late Shri Mardhekar who has started a sort of new wave in Marathi poems. But what he wrote was beyond our understanding in simpler way. A poet always writes in his own style and sometimes it requires help from inteluctuals. Mardhekar was again an exception to all the poets.
Mangesh Nabar
Mangesh,
I don't think Mardhekar started a new wave.
"Wave creators" in Marathi were first Dnyaneshwar (13th century) and then Tukaram-Ramdas (17th century).
If at all anything new was started in 19/20th century, in Marathi poetry, it was by Keshavsut and Balkavi.
Gangadhar Gadgil called Mardhekar, second Keshavsut. He was probably right. Mardhekar's output of good poems is not much larger than that of Keshavsut and Balkavi.
I feel the greatest Marathi language poet since the dawn of 18th century is Arun Kolatkar, although he is a dwarf in front of the giants of Marathi poetry: Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram, Ramdas.
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