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."

Sunday, April 28, 2013

If Marathas and Tipu-sultan Came Together... एक दरबारचित्र आणि दोन मोठ्या चुका नवीन पुस्तकातील

Loksatta dated April 28 2013 has published edited version of preface written by M/s Suhas Bahulkar and Deepak Ghare (सुहास बहुळकर,  दीपक घारे) for their own book 'Shilpakar Charitrakosh' (शिल्पकार चरित्रकोश') that is going to be published on May 4 2013.

I look forward to the book.

However,  I was startled by this part of their preface:

"सवाई माधवरावांच्या काळातील पुण्यातील रेसिडेन्ट मॅलेट यानेही जेम्स वेल्स या चित्रकाराला आमंत्रित करून एक भव्य चित्र रंगवण्यास सांगितले होते. हे चित्र इंग्रज, मराठे व टिपू सुलतान यांच्यात ६ ऑगस्ट १७९० रोजी झालेल्या त्रिवर्ग तहाचे..."

(Pune 'Resident' Malet during the reign of Sawai Madhavrao had invited artist James Wales and asked him to paint a majestic picture. That picture was of a tripartite treaty between the British, Maratha and Tipu sultan done on August 6 1790...)



Artist: Thomas Daniell, commissioned by Sir Charles Malet circa 1805

courtesy: Tate Gallery and Wikimedia Commons

I have already written about this picture on September 23 2007.

Like the picture above, funnily there are two blunders in Bahulkar/Ghare statement as well!

1:  The artist of the picture is Thomas Daniell and NOT James Wales.

(p.s. It has been claimed that the painting was started by James Wales and his team but completed by Thomas Daniell. Visit here to read about it.)

2:  The treaty was NOT with Tipu sultan but it was AGAINST HIM. It was among the Nizam , Marathas and the British! If Marathas and Tipu sultan had come together, the history of India would have turned out to be quite different. The British were most scared of that possibility. The way USA is scared today of India and China coming together.


If the book on the history of art starts with such bloomers, can I trust such a book for anything else other than  pretty pictures in there?