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."

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Thursday, December 29, 2016

फेसबुकावरील स्मारके ....Memorials on Facebook

I have created Facebook pages dedicated to some of my favourite writers and artists. Over the years, I have created a few pages on English Wikipedia too.

Here I have listed FB pages in alphabetic order. (Please note that my father: Gopal Dutt Kulkarni and Vasant Sarwate are very much alive!)

p.s. After I had completed writing the post, Sarwate died on December 24 2016.



Facebook page Address Likes as of Dec 29 2016
1 B S Mardhekar& Co बा. सी. मर्ढेकर आणि कंपनी https://www.facebook.com/myBaSeeMardhekar/?ref=bookmarks 909
2 D G Godse, A Search शोध द. ग. गोडसेंचा https://www.facebook.com/MastaniDaGaGodse/?ref=bookmarks 356
3 Dinanath Dalal (In Marathi: दीनानाथ दलाल) https://www.facebook.com/artistdinanathdalal/?ref=bookmarks 2329
4 Durga Bhagwat An Appreciation दुर्गा भागवत एक आस्वाद https://www.facebook.com/durgabhagwatappreciation/?ref=bookmarks 1341
5 G A Kulkarni, An Appreciation जी ए कुलकर्णी, एक आस्वाद https://www.facebook.com/myGAKulkarni/?ref=bookmarks 874
6 Gopal Dutt Kulkarni गोपाळ दत्त कुलकर्णी https://www.facebook.com/gopalduttkulkarni/?ref=bookmarks 3
7 Govindrao Tembe गोविंदराव टेंबे https://www.facebook.com/GovindraoTembe/?ref=bookmarks 639
8 My Sadanand Rege माझे सदानंद रेगे https://www.facebook.com/mySadanandRege/?ref=bookmarks 431
9 Natyachhatakar Diwakar नाट्यछटाकार दिवाकर https://www.facebook.com/NatyachhatakarDiwakar/?ref=bookmarks 78
10 R D Karve, Who? र. धों. कर्वे, कोण? https://www.facebook.com/rdkarve/?ref=bookmarks 813
11 Ram Ganesh Gadkari राम गणेश गडकरी https://www.facebook.com/RamGaneshGadkari/?ref=bookmarks 1612
12 Remembering C V Joshi चिं वि जोशींच स्मरण https://www.facebook.com/ChinViJoshi/?ref=bookmarks 44
13 Setu Madhavrao Pagdi, A View सेतु माधवराव पगडी, मला दिसलेले https://www.facebook.com/mySetuMadhavraoPagdi/?ref=bookmarks 963
14 Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar, The Greatest श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर https://www.facebook.com/ShripadKrushnaKolhatkar/?ref=bookmarks 502
15 T S Shejwalkar, Lest We Forget त्र्यं. शं. शेजवलकर, विसरलो का? https://www.facebook.com/HistorianShejwalkar/?ref=bookmarks 307
16 The Art of Vasant Sarwate वसंत सरवटे यांची कला https://www.facebook.com/vasantsarwateappreciation/?ref=bookmarks 893
17 Two Brothers in Tandem-R K - Narayan & Laxman https://www.facebook.com/Two-Brothers-in-Tandem-R-K-Narayan-Laxman-283141975063419/?ref=bookmarks 24
18 Vilas Sarang, a literary critic विलास सारंग, टीकाकार https://www.facebook.com/vilassarangcritic/?ref=bookmarks 305
19 Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade विश्वनाथ काशिनाथ राजवाडे https://www.facebook.com/VishwanathKashinathRajwade/?ref=bookmarks 1155
20 Who was M V Dhond? कोण बर हे म. वा. धोंड? https://www.facebook.com/MaVaDhond/?ref=bookmarks 14
21 य दि फडके, एक वाटाड्या Y D Phadke, A Guide https://www.facebook.com/yadiphadkeaguide/?ref=bookmarks 7

Sunday, December 25, 2016

ओ हो हो ! काय अदभुत सौन्दर्य हो !...I Hope He's In A Better Place....Vasant Sarwate

Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) (February 3 1927 - December 24 2016) 

The greatest Indian cartoonist is no more on earth....I hope he is in a better place.....

Artist: The late Vasant Sarwate 

Don't Mixup Christmas With New Year's Eve...A Letter to Three Wives

Following sequence of picture frames is from  Joseph L. Mankiewicz's wonderful film 'A Letter to Three Wives', 1949.




courtesy: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

In the first picture above, L to R,  

Connie Gilchrist as Mrs. Ruby Finney,  
Barbara Lawrence as Georgiana "Babe" Finney,
ever so dependable Thelma Ritter as Sadi and
super gorgeous Linda Darnell as Lora Mae Hollingsway.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

She Never Made Jam...Ava Gardner

75 years ago, in 1941, Ava Gardner (1922-1990) made her debut in films.



Shawn Levy, ‘Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi, amd the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome’:

“...But the 1950s were allowing for a brassier and more overtly sexual image of feminine allure to emerge on movie screens than previously, and Hollywood would send a specimen of that sort to Rome in November 1953: Ava Gardner flew in after divorcing Frank Sinatra, to blow off a little steam at the nightclubs that were starting to pop up around town, to acquire a hand-fit wardrobe of couture dresses, and, almost incidentally, to play the title role in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, a story of a poor girl turned man-eating diva that was, apparently, personally tailored to Gardner as a bespoke gown...”


Ava Gardner:

“You can sum up my life in a sentence, honey: She made movies, she made out, and she made a fucking mess of her life. But she never made jam.”
(‘Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations’ by Peter Evans & Ava Gardner)







courtesy: respective copyright owners of the images

Saturday, December 17, 2016

(पन्नास वर्षांपूर्वी एक फार महान ) विदूषक आटोपला...Buster Keaton Died 50 Years Ago

Year 2016 is 50th death anniversary year of Buster Keaton (Oct 4, 1895- Feb 1, 1966)

सदानंद रेगे:
"सकाळी सकाळीच
हसण्याचा आवाज आला
 तेव्हाच मी ओळखलं-
वरच्या मजल्यावरचा
 विदूषक आटोपला.

प्रेतयात्रा व्यवस्थित
तडक थेट बिनबोभाट
हसत हसत. 

त्याच्या अश्रू-अश्रूची
 राख झाली
अन आमच्या कवट्या फ़ुटल्या
तरी त्याचं हसू
काही केल्या फुटेना. 

विदूषकाने जाताना 
हसू मागे ठेवून जावं,
हे त्याला कधी 
कळलंच नाही."

Artist: Joseph Farris, The New Yorker, May 12 1980

Thursday, December 15, 2016

येकाच्या लाळा गळाल्या...ते नागवींच लोळों लागलीं...Samarth Ramdas, Homer Simpson and Us

समर्थ रामदास :
"येक हात हालविती। येक पाय हालविती।
येक दांत खाती। कर्कराटें॥
येकांचीं वस्त्रें निघोनि गेलीं। ते नागवींच लोळों लागलीं।
येकांचीं मुंडासीं गडबडलीं। चहुंकडे॥
येक निजेलीं अव्यावेस्तें। येक दिसती जैसीं प्रेते।
दांत पसरुनी जैसीं भूतें। वाईट दिसती॥"...

‘येक हाका मारूं लागले। येक बोंबलित उठिले।
येक वचकोन राहिले। आपुले ठाईं॥
येक क्षणक्षणा खुरडती। येक डोई खाजविती।
येक कढों लागती। सावकास॥
येकाच्या लाळा गळाल्या। येकाच्या पिका सांडल्या।
येकीं लघुशंका केल्या। सावकास॥
येक राउत सोडिती। येक कर्पट ढेंकर देती।
येक खांकरुनी थुंकिती। भलतीकडे॥
येक हागती येक वोकिती। येक खोंकिती येक सिंकिती।
येक ते पाणी मागती। निदसुऱ्या स्वरें॥’
 (सौजन्य: समर्थ साधक)

आता 'येकाच्या लाळा गळाल्या', 'येकांचीं वस्त्रें निघोनि गेलीं। ते नागवींच लोळों लागलीं।' 'दांत पसरुनी जैसीं भूतें।'.... वगैरे माझ्या किंवा होमर सिम्पसन यांच्या बाबतीत खरे असेल....

courtesy: 20th Television and creators and developers of "The Simpsons"


... पण झोपणे काहीवेळा सुंदरही दिसू शकते...

'Sleep', c1800

Artist: Francisco de Goya




“Untitled, Moscow, Russia,” (2009-2011)

Photograph by Jana Romanova/Andrea Meislin.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Conrad मला फार श्रेष्ठ लेखक वाटतो. कारण त्याचे कथानक एक metaphor असतो...29 Years After GA


आज  डिसेंबर ११ २०१६, जी ए कुलकर्णींची  २९वी पुण्यतिथी आणि डिसेंबर ३ २०१६ हा कॉनराडांचा १५९वा जन्मदिन होता. 

Joseph Conrad, ‘The Secret Agent’:

“...The Professor passed the tip of his tongue on his dry, thin lips, and said doctorally:

"There are no such things. All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat–fed citizen would call a crime. You have no force." He paused, smiling sardonically under the fierce glitter of his thick glasses...”

जी ए कुलकर्णी, मे १७ १९८०:
"...Conrad किंवा Hardy सारखे लेखक नव्या नगाऱ्याच्या आवाजात फार दुर्लक्षित झाले आहेत. विशेषतः Conrad मला फार श्रेष्ठ लेखक वाटतो. कारण त्याचे कथानक एक metaphor असतो, तर विषय जीवनातील साक्षात्कार किंवा भ्रमनिरास किंवा anguish चे असतात..."
(पृष्ठ: १९४, 'जी.एं.ची निवडक पत्रे: खंड १', १९९५)
 
महान व्यंगचित्रकार डेविड लोंनी काढलेले कॉनरॅडांचे अर्कचित्र , १९२८

जीएंना जोसेफ कॉनरॅड अतिशय आवडत. त्यांच्या पत्रात तर ते अतिशय आदराने येतातच आणि त्यांच्या साहित्य प्रकृतीला पण कॉनरॅड जवळचे होते.

खालील दोन अवतरणे वाचा कॉनरॅडांची..."fatality governing this man-inhabited world",,,आहे ना जीएंची नाममुद्रा?

"...the only remedy for China-men and for the rest is the change of hearts, but looking at the history of the last 2000 years there is not much reason to expect  that thing, even if a man has taken to flying- a great uplift, no doubt, but no great change. He doesn’t fly like an eagle; he flies like a beetle. And you must have noticed how ugly, ridiculous, and fatuous is the flight of a beetle..."

"...I have never been able to find in any man's book or any man's talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world..."

शिवाय त्यांनी एक विद्यार्थी म्हणून कॉनरॅडांच्या पुस्तकांचा अभ्यास केला असेल आणि काही पुस्तके शिक्षक म्हणून कदाचित शिकवली पण असतील- उदा. Lord Jim (1900), Heart of Darkness (1899),  Nostromo (1904)....

अलीकडे जुलै २०१६ मध्ये दी सिक्रेट एजन्ट पुन्हा एकदा, चौथ्यांदा, बीबीसीने, छोट्या पडद्यावर आणले.

Tom Reiss, The New York Times, September 11 2005:

"The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel about an anarchist plot to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich -- in fact, a scheme by a secret police agent to stir up a government backlash -- has acquired a kind of cult status as the classic novel for the post-9/11 age. Conrad's villain, the Professor, who never goes out without a glass vial of high explosives in his breast pocket and a detonator in his palm, has been taken to be a prescient portrait of the terrorists who menace our own world... The Secret Agent" remains the most brilliant novelistic study of terrorism as viewed from the blood-spattered outside...”

जीएंनी जोसेफ कॉनरॅडांचे 'दी सिक्रेट एजन्ट', १९०७ किंवा दुसरे कोणतेही पुस्तक का अनुवादले नाही?

जीए डिसेंबर १९८७ मध्ये वारले. अमेरिकेत तो जरी सप्टेंबर २००१ मध्ये मोठ्या प्रमाणात पोचला असला तरी, आतंकवाद भारतामध्ये केंव्हाच स्थिरावला होता.  पंजाब  त्यामुळे पूर्णपणे ढवळून निघाला होता: १९८४-१९९५.  (मला आठवतय ज्यावेळी आम्ही १९८९ साली आसामला पहिल्यांदा गेलो त्यावेळी आजच्या इतकीच कडक सेक्युरिटी कलकत्ता एअरपोर्टवरती होती.)

भारताच्या पंतप्रधानाची हत्या  होऊन जीए जाईपर्यंत तीन वर्षे झाली होती. जीएंना कधी या दरम्यान 'दी सिक्रेट एजन्ट' आठवले नाही? का त्यांना निवांतपणा आणि प्रकृतिस्वास्थ्य, जे एका लेखकाला लागते, ते त्याकाळात कधी लाभलेच नाही?

जी एंनी कॉनरॅड रिखटर यांच्या पाच पुस्तकांचा अनुवाद केला पण त्यांच्या दुसऱ्या (जास्त?) आवडत्या कॉनरॅडच्या एकही पुस्तकाचा अनुवाद त्यांनी केला नाही हि मोठी खेदाची गोष्ट आहे.

मराठी लेखकांनी- अगदी सदानंद रेगे आणि विलास सारंगांनी सुद्धा-  जोसेफ कॉनरॅडना दुर्लक्षिले आहे...का?  याचे उत्तर जॉन ग्रेंच्या खालच्या अवतरणात तर नाही?

"...Conrad published The Secret Agent in 1907. Although he experimented boldly with literary techniques, he was essentially a 19th-century writer. He took his subject matter from the anxieties of his time - the ambiguities of progress and civilisation, the sense of the blind drift of history that preceded the First World War and the break-up of personal identity that comes with loss of faith in the future. For much of the past hundred years, these seemed dated themes, with little bearing on the great political transformations that preoccupied novelists such as George Orwell and Arthur Koestler. Whatever horrors they chronicled, Orwell and Koestler never gave up the hope that humankind could have a better future. It did not occur to them that history might be cyclical, not progressive, with the struggles of earlier eras returning and being played out against a background of increased scientific knowledge and technological power. For all their dystopian forebodings, neither anticipated the 21st-century reality, in which ethnic and religious wars have supplanted secular ideological conflicts, terror has returned to the most advanced societies and empire is being reinvented...." 

('Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings', 2009)

मराठी लेखक सुद्धा ऑरवेल आणि केस्ट्लर यांच्या प्रमाणे 'प्रगती'च्या ट्रॅप मध्ये तर अडकले नाहीत?
"Whatever horrors they chronicled, Orwell and Koestler never gave up the hope that humankind could have a better future. It did not occur to them that history might be cyclical, not progressive, with the struggles of earlier eras returning and being played out against a background of increased scientific knowledge and technological power."

माझ्यामते त्याचे उत्तर २०व्या शतकातील बहुतेक मराठी लेखकांच्या बाबतीत 'हो' असे आहे. पण जीए त्यात नाहीत. त्यांना दी सिक्रेट एजन्ट चा अनुवाद करायला अनेक कारणांमुळे जमले नाही एवढेच मी गृहीत धरतो. 



on the right Toby Jones as Mr Anton Verloc

from BBC's TV series 'The Secret Agent' based on Joseph Conrad's novel of the same name, 2016

Courtesy: BBC