मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि 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: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Aujourd'hui maman est morte...

Today October 10 2012 is 75th Birth Anniversary of my Mother

I have 'liked' FB page of Albert Camus.

In August 2012 following was posted there:

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure." [In French: "Aujourd'hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."]  (from 'The Stranger' / 'L'Étranger', 1942)

A person had commented on FB:

"Difficult to say if the above statement " Mother died today......" symbolises nihilism,absurdism or plain foray into existentialism or all three. But it remains timeless. One of my favorite from the world of anguish and melancholy."

I wrote:

"is it just confusion on mother's death...because that's what happened to me."

It really was confusion first and foremost. Just about everything was same as before. Only she was hiding. Or hidden...

"It was noisy in the main marketplace; there were swings going up and down, barred organs playing, an accordion wheezing away, and drunken voices calling out. And then pony-rides began on the main street in the afternoon- it was all great fun, in a word; everything went well, just as it had the previous year, and as it probably would the following one." ('The Bishop', 1902 by Anton Chekhov)




 Artist: Hippolyte Delaroche commonly known as Paul Delaroche 

Name of the painting:  "Louise Vernet on her Deathbed", 1845-46

courtesy: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and SPIEGEL ONLINE

My father talked about Camus's book the day after my mother's death. I knew the author and the celebrated book but I had not read it.

Since then I have read it. Was I then- now I feel- like Meursault in some ways? (Or was it my father?)

Like my mother, the book has given me so much...