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."

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Jean-Jacques Sempé's Picture Moves us to Penance?

John Gray, February 2012:

"...Comte wanted his new religion to be based on science, so the temples of humanity pointed only as far as science could reach. That is why his new church failed. The very idea of a science-based religion is an absurdity. The value of religion is that it points beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science, showing us that a mystery would remain even if everything could be finally explained. The heart of religion isn't belief, but something more like what Keats described as negative capability: "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"..."


Ned Flanders:

"Why me, Lord? Where have I gone wrong? I've always been nice to people! I don't drink or dance or swear! I've even kept kosher just to be on the safe side! I've done everything the Bible says; even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! What more could I do?" 

 (The Simpsons, 'Hurricane Neddy', Season 8 Episode 8, Aired December 29, 1996)
 
Look at the following picture by great cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé





 

Artist: Jean-Jacques Sempé (August 17 1932 - )

courtesy: Madhukar Dharmapurikar (मधुकर धर्मापुरीकर

In a church, an old lady is stunned to find a mouse, with a halo around its head, is being chased by a ferocious looking cat. The outcome looks almost certain.

Unfortunately, all the details in the picture are not very clear. For instance, there are a couple of paintings on the wall of the church. And if you look closely, you will notice they depict some kind of violence. 

Andrew Graham-Dixon writes in "Caravaggio A Life Sacred and Profane", 2012:

"Caravaggio’s art is made from darkness and light. His pictures present spotlit moments of extreme and often agonized human experience. A man is decapitated in his bedchamber, blood spurting from a deep gash in his neck. A man is assassinated on the high altar of a church..."


'The Beheading of St John', 1608    Location St. John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta

Artist: Caravaggio  ( "In the blood gushing from the saint’s neck, Caravaggio signed his name. It is his only signature on a painting.")

In Sempe's church, it's not going to be a man but just a mouse. But in the background, there is probably a Caravaggio.


Edward Mendelson has said:

"Great institutions thrive on internal contradictions and irresolvable divisions. This has always been the case with governments and universities, and especially with religions..."

A church mouse that has earned its halo, no less, finds no mercy as it is about to breathe its last.

While reviewing 'Hunting Evil/ The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice' by Guy Walters, Deborah E.Lipstadt says:

"...The Vatican also went out of its way to protect criminals. It provided passports, refuge and other means of support for them. While the church's record during the war may be open to some debate, its record in helping the murderers escape responsibility afterward is clear, as has been documented by both Michael Phayer in "The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965" and Gerald Steinacher in "Nazis auf der Flucht..."

Is Sempe's church protecting the killer cat?

Mr. Graham-Dixon says in the book quoted above:

"...The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed a widespread call to order – a movement intended to take religious art back to the values of an earlier and supposedly purer time. Carlo Borromeo was at its forefront. As well as containing recommendations of every kind about church architecture and decoration, his Instructiones set out his views on art with typical forthrightness. No animals or other distracting details should be included, unless actually mentioned in the biblical text that the artist had been instructed to illustrate. In the seventeenth chapter of his book, devoted to the correct representation of sacred events, Borromeo determined the appropriate fines and punishments for artists who failed to meet the strictest standards of decorum. In Milan, errant artists as well as heretics were liable to come to the attentions of the archbishop’s famiglia armata. No painter could be in any doubt about what was required of him. Images should be clear and direct. It was the job of art simply to educate spectators and move them to penance..."

In Sempe's picture, there are two animals...there are lots of distracting details...even then Sempe's picture perhaps moves us to penance!