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, November 04, 2011

Henry aka गुणाकार...oops गुणाकर

Today November 4 2011 is 63rd Death Anniversary of Carl Anderson, creator of Henry aka गुणाकर.

I have already expressed my love for Phantom (comics) here.

A side attraction of those comics books was one page comics of Henry. In Marathi (मराठी), it was titled as 'Gunakar' (गुणाकर). It used to be printed at the beginning or at the end of the main comics.

Until recently I couldn't figure out how Henry became 'Gunakar' in Marathi. Confusion was even more when I used to read it as 'Gunakaar'(गुणाकार) meaning multiplication in Marathi!

If indeed it were to be 'Gunakaar' (गुणाकार), the English word should have been Asterix!

Artists: René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo

Now, I understand that 'गुणाकर' in Hindi means very gifted ('अत्यंत गुणी').

Because Henry is mute, there was nothing much to translate!

Art Baxter says about Henry:

"One never sought out the HENRY strip on the funny pages (when it was still on the funny pages that is). It was read after the favorites. It was read simply because it was there. The fact is, it was never good but it wasn't terrible either. Yet, we were compelled to see what the bald headed, ass-faced boy was up to that day."

I agree. I read it after the main story of 'The Phantom' or 'Mandrake the Magician' or 'Flash Gordon'.

"Henry is autonomous in the SATURDAY EVENING POST strips. HENRY would not pick up a regular cast of characters, all with no proper names, only titles: the mother, the dog, the bully, the little girl, until it became a William Randolph Hurst comic strip. The SEP HENRY is similar in many ways to the LITTLE RASCAL/OUR GANG comedies of the same era. That is children free from the tyranny of an adult presence (mostly). Children navigating the world as best they can with the knowledge and experience they currently possess. Sometimes they get things right, often get things wrong, and frequently come up with solutions to problems unique to their limited experience. Necessity is the mother of invention with funny surprising results."


Henry is carrying a case of milk bottles on his head. "Sometimes they get things right". Henry has because milk after all builds strong teeth, bones and muscles.

Does this make Henry very gifted 'गुणाकर'?

But if he drops the case...he "often gets things wrong."

Forty Heads of Henry
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