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."

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Poker Night Never Ends: Tennessee Williams @105

Today March 26 2016 is 105th Birth Anniversary of Tennessee Williams

 John Lahr, ‘Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh’, 2014:

“…Sexuality brought Williams down to earth and into life. “What do you expect to get from this sort of life?” Stanley asks Blanche about her promiscuity, in the first version of Streetcar. “Just life,” she says. Sexuality also called all absolutes into question. “The truth of the matter is that all human ideals have been hats too big for the human head,” Williams wrote in his diary in 1942. “Chivalry—democracy—christianity—The Hellenic ideal of Intellectual purity (the one I find most appealing)—all too big a hat!”…”

I feel Marathi stage owes a  debt to Mr. Williams.

Without  his plays 'A Streetcar Named Desire',  1947 and  'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ', 1955, there would perhaps be no Marathi plays like Vijay Tendulkar's  (विजय तेंडुलकर) 'Sakharam Binder', 1972 & Jaywant Dalvi's (जयवंत  दळवी ) 'Barrister' (बॅरिस्टर ), 1977 , 'Purush' (पुरुष), 1982.


Poker Night ('A Streetcar Named Desire'), 1948  by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), the Whitney Museum NYC

"Poker Night captures the sexual tension and violent undertones in the relationships between Blanche DuBois, a down-and-out Southern belle (holding up a mirror), her sister, Stella (leaning over the armchair), and Stella’s husband, the hot-tempered, childlike Stanley Kowalski (wearing a white undershirt). It documents one of the play’s most dramatic and memorable moments, when Blanche taunts a drunk and angry Stanley with her petty provocations and refined airs."

This picture makes me wonder why, in India, we don't have paintings capturing a slice of a great play or a movie from 20th century. We have such paintings for Indian mythology drawn by the likes of  Raja Ravi Varma or Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi or T.V. Subramaniam (Maniam).

For instance staging of 'Samyukta Manapman' (संयुक्त मानापमान) on July 8 1921,  featuring two greats Keshavrao Bhosale (केशवराव भोसले) and Bal Gandharva (बाल गंधर्व),  was one of the greatest events on the cultural map of 20th century Maharashtra. It can only be compared to the rock star concerts in today's era. It's said that if the play were to be performed in open air, the ticket collection could been as much as Rs. 1 lac.   

(Gold price was $20.67 per ounce at the end of 1921, in March 2016 it's $1218.7...Therefore Rs. 1 lac then would be about Rs. 60 lac today...for just one performance of a Marathi play!)

And yet there is no great painting based on that performance!
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