Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

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."

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Dnyaneshwari's Animal Planet: अहा कटा हें वोखटें । मृत्युलोकींचें उफराटें ।

Alfred Edward Housman:

"For nature, heartless, witless nature,

Will neither care nor know

What stranger's feet may find the meadow

And trespass there and go,

Nor ask amid the dews of morning

If they are mine or no."

James Parker says: "Character, human character, expressed through relationship with bird, beast, or fish—that’s the Animal Planet method. "

This is so because Animal Planet is not about animals it's about us, humans!

James Parker continues:

“And if nature asks us to treat it with humor?” enquired Czeslaw Milosz, introducing a poem by Robert Francis in the anthology 'A Book of Luminous Things': If Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit, and his friends-and-relations, if all that humanization is precisely what nature expects from us? In other words, perhaps we are unable to say—to tell her—anything, except ascribing to her sadness, smiles, ominousness, serenity? What a canny poet Milosz was. Nature unobserved, unsentimentalized, unpolluted with our delusions, is just a bunch of stuff eating itself. Here endeth the lesson of Animal Planet: it’s all about the human. Oh, Homo sapiens. Oh, blessed biped. Oh, you."

"Nature is just a bunch of stuff eating itself."

But the nature in Dnyaneshwari is closer to the truth than in the animal planet.

Exhibit 1:

Dnyaneshwari (ज्ञानेश्वरी, अध्याय ९ राजविद्याराजगृह्ययोग):

"जंव जंव बाळ बळिया वाढे । तंव तंव भोजें नाचती कोडें । आयुष्य निमालें आंतुलियेकडे । ते ग्लानीचि नाहीं ॥ ५११ ॥

जन्मलिया दिवसदिवसें । हों लागे काळाचियाचि ऐसें । कीं वाढती करिती उल्हासें । उभविती गुढिया ॥ ५१२ ॥ अगा मर हा बोलु न साहती । आणि मेलिया तरी रडती । परि असतें जात न गणिती । गहिंसपणें ॥ ५१३ ॥

दर्दुर सापें गिळिजतु आहे उभा । कीं तो मासिया वेटाळी जिभा । तैसे प्राणिये कवणा । वाढविती तृष्णा ॥ ५१४ ॥

अहा कटा हें वोखटें । मृत्युलोकींचें उफराटें । एथ अर्जुना जरी अवचटें । जन्मलासी तूं ॥ ५१५॥"

(As a child grows, they fondle it with great joy and do not grieve that its life is getting reduced. A child comes under the sway of death from its very birth, but they celebrate its birthday with great pomp. O Partha, people cannot bear to hear the name of death and mourn when a relation dies. But they do not foolishly consider how their life is getting spent. When the serpent is swallowing the frog, the latter is catching flies with its tongue. In the same way, being increase their desires. Alas! How foul and perverse are the things of this mortal world! O Partha, even though you are born in this world by mere accident (511-515), spurn it and take to the path of devotion, by which you will come to my eternal abode.)

Snake is eating frog, frog is eating fly...

Exhibit-II:

"हें जाणों मृत्यु रागिटा । सिंहाडयाचा दरकुटा । परी काय वांजटा । पूरिजत असे ? ॥६०॥

महाकल्पापरौतीं । कव घालूनि अवचितीं । सत्यलोकभद्रजाती । आंगीं वाजे ॥६१॥

लोकपाळ नित्य नवे । दिग्गजांचे मेळावे । स्वर्गींचिये आडवे । रिगोनि मोडी ॥६२॥

येर ययाचेनि अंगवातें । जन्ममृत्यूचिये गर्तें । निर्जिवें होऊनि भ्रमतें । जीवमृगें ॥६३॥

न्याहाळीं पां केव्हडा । पसरलासे चवडा । जो करूनियां माजिवडा । आकारगजु ॥६४॥

म्हणौनि काळाची सत्ता । हाचि बोलु निरुता । ऐसे वाद पंडुसुता । क्षेत्रालागीं ॥६५॥"

("This Kala is dreadful like a den of lions. If after knowing this you indulge in empty talk, how will it help you? This Kala will hold in his fatal grip all of a sudden even the blessed denizens of Satyaloka at the final dissolution of the world. He enters the heavenly woods and destroys the eight regents and elephants that guard the eight quarters. In the whirl of this Kala, the deer in the form of human beings become dispirited and wander in the pits of births and deaths. Just see how this Kala has spread out his paw and has held in it the elephant in the form of the world and so the supremacy of this Kala over the Field is the sole truth.

O Arjuna, these are different views about the Field. (61-65)")

In this instance lion overpowering elephant and deer...

And the lions are not just in jungles and zoos...