George Orwell on Mark Twain: "But most people who have studied his work have come away with a feeling that he might have done something more." (Mark Twain -- The Licensed Jester)
Chitre helped organise an event to observe the first death anniversary of Arun Kolatkar (अरुण कोलटकर) in September 2005.
I attended it.
It was an informal gathering, almost the exact opposite of the one I described earlier: Vinda Karandikar's book release function.
It was chaotic. A lot more younger people. Mobile phones kept ringing loudly the whole evening.
Number of people spoke on Kolatkar. Fighting back tears, I too piled on.
Maybe Kolatkar would have liked it that way! Chitre certainly seemed to enjoy!
There I saw a short-film made by Chitre on Kolatkar. It was made when Kolatkar was terminally ill.
Later I read someone complaining that Chitre didn't write something 'great' on Kolatkar when he died. He couldn't have. His creative juices had already oozed out in the form of the film.
Kolatkar will probably be remembered as a better poet than Chitre. I don't know why but I thought Chitre wanted to be a lot more than just a poet.
Sometimes I thought he was not entirely happy being just Tukaram's great follower. He wanted to be in Tukaram's league! Perhaps Marathi speaking Leonardo da Vinci?
He may not have succeeded but what an ambition! In Robert Browning's words:
"...He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by instalment.
He ventured neck or nothing-heaven's success
Found, or earth's failure:.."
Chitre seemed to have almost given up writing poetry for a long time while Kolatkar sought new horizons with a masterly work like Bhijaki Vahi (भिजकी वही) in his final years. (Kolatkar himself was creatively very ambitious. He wanted to be a figure like Bob Dylan and learnt to play Pakhavaj in later years of his life.)
I thought they two were like Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray. You take your pick.
In the passing of this duo, Marathi culture has seen the fall of two citadels. Our rugged landscape is poorer for it.
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."
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3 comments:
What did you think of that film on Kolatkar? I saw the first uncut version and I am curious to hear your review.
I couldn't hear the soundtrack at all. There was so much of noise.
Therefore, my rating won't be fair.
But if I am forced to make a call, I didn't like it.
I agree with you on this one. Too little of Kolatkar's own voice or of his Marathi poetry, I thought.
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