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, March 20, 2013

Username and Password?....तो तूंच हटकलेंस 'कोण' म्हणून

Today March 20 2013 is 57th death anniversary of B S Mardhekar (बा सी मर्ढेकर)...sometimes it's hard to imagine someone with his command of Marathi was writing in that language not too many years ago...

Graham Greene:
"Well, there is no such thing as success. The priest can't hope to become a saint- or else it's an illusory dream which vanishes with time; the writer can't hope to write a book equal those of Tolstoy, Dickens or Balzac. He might have dared to believe in the possibility at the outset, but his books always carry a flaw somewhere."

Very early in his short career,  BSM (1909-1956) knew he was a good poet, a special talent perhaps, or maybe even more.

Why do I say that?

"गेलॉ विदूषक जरी ठरुनी सुहास,
दान्ते-नि-शेक्सपिअर-संगत आसपास
कोठे तरी स्वमरणोत्तर भाग्यकाली-!
हाही विचार न कमी मज शांतिदायी."

[poem no 15, "शिशिरागम" ("shishiragam") from "मर्ढेकरांची कविता" ("Mardhekaranchi Kavita"), 1959-1977; courtesy: राघव बाळ मर्ढेकर (Raghav Bal Mardhekar)]

("Even if I pass on as a grinning joker,
company of Dante and Shakespeare in proximity
somewhere in my good fortune after my death-!
even this thought is no less consoling")

Remember, in 'Shishiragam' collection,  BSM is NOT the poet we now know. There, he comes across as some one following his idol Madhav Julian  (माधव जूलियन) or English romantic poets he studied and later taught.

But then he is already thinking of life after death spent in the neighborhood of Dante and Shakespeare! It's like after playing just one season of Ranji trophy cricket with some success, you seek the company of Don  Bradman and Garry Sobers in your afterlife!

If you do that you are either a pompous fool or you must be really good and confident about your creative future. For me, Mardhekar was the latter.

What might have happened when rather young BSM met his maker?





Artist: Arnie Levin, The New Yorker, May 29 2000

courtesy: the artist, the magazine and  Bob Mankoff's blog

(Now, user name and password are confidential. No one is supposed to ask them to you, especially  very openly. But then where's the problem if it's perhaps the last time you will ever need them?)

Mardhekar was perhaps ushered in without this formality and shown his dwelling next to Dante and Shakespeare! I hope so.

Or was he?

"आलो क्षणिचा विसावा म्हणून;
टेकले पाय:
तो तूंच हटकलेंस 'कोण' म्हणून
आणि मनांतले शिणलेले हेतू
शेण झाले"

[the last and unnumbered poem of the section 'Kanheen Kavita' from 'Mardhekaranchee Kavita', 1959/1977 ('कांही कविता', 'मर्ढेकरांची कविता')]

("I came to rest momentarily;
touched down feet:
At once you confronted with "who"
and the tired aspirations in the mind
turned to shit")

Is "who" in the poem above refers to "Username and password?"