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."

Friday, September 18, 2015

जी ए कुलकर्णी...Did GA know Ingrid Bergman's Admiration of Eugene O’Neill?

As I have said on this blog earlier, G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी) was an admirer of Eugene O’Neill. In the only letter he sent to me, he prods 22-year-old me to read Dostoyevsky and O’Neill.

Robert Dowling has written a book 'Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts', 2014. It has been much reviewed.

In February 2015, John Lahr- author of much lauded 'Tennessee Williams', 2014- has reviewed it for London Review of Books.

Mr. Lahr writes:

"...O’Neill was a rangy handsome man who looked out at his bleak world with large haunted eyes. ‘They were the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my whole life. They were like wells; you fell into them,’ the 26-year-old Ingrid Bergman said, who had had a success in a San Francisco production of Anna Christie but wouldn’t let O’Neill lure her away from her film ambitions..."




Now, by some coincidence, GA too was an admirer of Ms. Bergman! GA mentions her a few times in his  letters.

In a letter dated April 12 1980 to Ms. Sunita Deshpande (सुनिता देशपांडे ),  he writes:

"...मी Garboचा एकच, 'Ninotechka' हा  चित्रपट पाहिला, पण अनेक stills पाहिले आहेत. Ingrid Bergman देखील अविस्मरणीय आहे…."

[...I have see just one feature of (Greta) Garbo- Ninotechka (1939) but have seen her many snaps. Ingrid Bergman too is unforgettable...]

Elsewhere he recalls a Marathi article (by Mr. Deshpande?), on Ms. Bergman, he had loved. 

Did GA know this Bergman's admiration of O’Neill? Would he have felt jealous of O’Neill if he knew it?