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."

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

वृषण नव्हे शेपटी: अतिसभ्यतेची कास...Panchatantra's Wedge-Pulling Monkey

Today, March 3 2015, my son Jaydutt turns 21...a big day for him, perhaps but certainly for his mother Anju and me...We encouraged him to read / watch/ listen to lots of classics, we never taught him many so-called morals and tried to show him two sides of most problems...as for profanity, he could not help listening to it because of his father...I was brought up in Miraj where a tail was never just a fucking tail! 

"...शिव्या हा समाजाचा एक अपरिहार्य भाग आहे. शिव्यांना अनैतिक ठरवायचे झाले तर अगदी शेक्सपीअरपासूनचे निम्मेअधिक साहित्य हद्दपार करावे लागेल. सेन्सॉर बोर्डाने चित्रपटांतील शिव्यांवर बंदी घालणे हे मूर्ख मध्यमवर्गीय धर्मनिष्ठतेचे लक्षण असल्याची टीका ज्येष्ठ नाटककार-दिग्दर्शक आणि अभिनेते गिरीश कर्नाड यांनी रविवारी केली..." (लोकसत्ता, February 23 2015)

"मराठी माणसांनी केलेल्या लेखनामुळे कन्नड साहित्य समृद्ध झाले. त्याची परिणती ज्ञानपीठ पुरस्कारविजेत्यांच्या यादीमध्ये दिसते. तर, १९४८ मध्ये झालेल्या गांधी हत्येनंतर अतिसभ्यतेची कास धरल्यानेच मराठी साहित्याने आपला बाज हरवला, असे मत ज्येष्ठ साहित्यिक आणि रंगकर्मी गिरीश कर्नाड यांनी सोमवारी व्यक्त केले." (लोकसत्ता, November 12 2013)

I must have read Panchatantra in Marathi dozes of times during my childhood. Even today I remember every story.

Recently I bought "संपूर्ण पंचतंत्र: प्रामाणिक मराठी भाषांतर" (sampoorna panchatantra: pramanik marathi bhashantar), 1977 by ह. अ. भावे (H. A. Bhave).

I started thumbing through it and came across one of my favorite stories:  'The Wedge-Pulling Monkey', in Marathi 'पाचर उपटणारे माकड'.

The story has this:"...There the monkeys began their playful frolics upon tree-top, lofty roof, and woodpile. Then one of them, whose doom was near, thoughtlessly bestrode the log, thinking: "Who stuck a wedge in this queer place?" So he seized it with both hands and started  to work it loose. Now what happened when the wedge gave at the spot where his private parts entered the cleft, that, sir, you know without being told..."

(from the translation dated 1925 by Arthur W. Ryder)

Now I remembered clearly that the Marathi translation we had stated that the monkey's tail- not penis- was caught in the cleft.

Therefore, I looked up the same story in Bhave's book. It stated:

"....खांबातून पाचर निसटली व त्याचे वृषण फटीत अडकले!…" 

Thank goodness, Bhave's translation indeed is honest (प्रामाणिक) and NOT sanitized!


Artist: Anant Salkar (अनंत सालकर)
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