Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."

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."

Wednesday, June 05, 2019

पहिल्यांदा प्लासी, आता निरो...Marathi Political Analyst Simplifies and Distorts History

श्री. भाऊ तोरसेकर आणि श्री सुनील तांबे यांच्या प्लासीच्या लढाईबाबतच्या लेखनाबद्दल मे २८ २०१९ रोजी लिहले.

आता तोरसेकर रोमचे बादशाह निरो यांच्या बद्दल जून ४ २०१९ रोजी लिहतात :
"... त्यामुळे रोम जळत असताना फ़िडल वाजवत बसलेल्या निरो नामक सम्राटाचे स्मरण झाले. मुळात निरोने रोम जळत असताना वाद्य वाजवत बसण्यात काहीही गैर नव्हते. कारण तो मनोरुग्ण होता आणि त्याला साधासरळ विचारही करता येत नव्हता. पण याने दिलेली वतने व अनुदाने याच्यावरच ज्यांची गुजराण किंवा चैनमौज चाललेली होती, त्यांना साम्राज्य किंवा देश याची कुठलीही फ़िकीर नव्हती. साम्राज्य वाचवण्यासाठी कोणी खमक्या हुशार राजा त्या जागी आणला तर नक्कीच ते राज्य वाचवणे शक्य होते. पण असा कर्तबगार राजा असल्या फ़ुकट्या बुद्धीमंतांची आधी हाकालपट्टी करण्याची खात्री होती. त्यापेक्षा मनोरुग्ण सम्राट त्यांना कौतुकाचा वाटत होता. यापेक्षा आजच्या कॉग्रेस पक्षाची वा त्याच्या भगतगणांची कहाणी किंचीतही वेगळी नाही...."
हे वाचून मी Barry Strauss यांच्या 'Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors From Augustus to Constantine' , २०१९ या पुस्तकाकडे वळलो.

त्या दहा सीझर मध्ये निरो आहेत. Strauss म्हणतात:

“…Nero did quite respectably at some of the aspects of his job. He won the support of the common people. He was a great builder. He was a superb impresario. He presided over a cultural renaissance. He loved Greece and won the support of the Greek East. It should also be remembered that for about the first five years of his reign, he had the support of the Senate as well.

Where did Nero fail? By appointing an incompetent governor, he caused a major revolt in Judea. By confiscating property, he stirred up revolt in the Western provinces. By persecuting and executing elite enemies, and by embarrassing himself in the eyes of the elite through his personal behavior, he stirred up conspiracy and revolt.

Nero was the most cultivated and cruelest emperor Rome had seen, and one of the last members of the old Roman nobility to serve as emperor. After Nero, and with the exception of Galba’s brief reign, it would be nearly two hundred years before another member of the Roman nobility served as emperor.

Nero’s predecessors, aristocrats all, were more martial and sometimes madder, but none was more magnificent. None would match his exhibitionism….”

मेरी बिअर्ड त्यांच्या गाजलेल्या 'SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome', २०१५ पुस्तकात म्हणतात :

“…A number of modern historians have presented Nero in particular more as a victim of the propaganda of the Flavian dynasty, starting with Vespasian, which succeeded him, than as a self-obsessed, mother-killing pyromaniac who reputedly started the great fire of 64 CE not just to enjoy the spectacle but also to clear land for building his vast new palace, the Golden House. Even Tacitus admits, the rehabilitators point out, that Nero was the sponsor of effective relief measures for the homeless after the fire; and the reputed extravagance of his new residence, with all its luxuries (including a revolving dining room), did not prevent the parsimonious Vespasian and his sons from taking over part of it as their home. Besides, in the twenty years after Nero’s death in 68 CE at least three false Neros, complete with lyre, appeared in the eastern parts of the empire, making a bid for power by claiming to be the emperor himself, still alive despite all the reports of his suicide. They were all quickly eliminated, but the deception suggests that in some areas of the Roman world Nero was fondly remembered: no one seeks power by pretending to be an emperor universally hated….”

रोमन साम्राज्य १५०० (इसपू २७ - इस १४५३) वर्षे टिकले होते. Julio-Claudian dynasty जरी इ स ६९ मध्ये संपली असली तरी निरो यांच्या नंतर रोमन साम्राज्य १३८५ वर्षे शिल्लक होते. Barry Strauss यांच्या पुस्तकात १० मध्ये निरो यांचा अनुक्रमांक ३ रा आहे आणि त्यानंतर ७ सम्राट येतात.

आता पुन्हा एकदा तोरसेकर काय लिहतात ते वाचा.

म्हणजे निरोंचा इतिहास सुद्धा , प्लासी सारखा गुंतागुंतीचा आहे आणि त्याचे सुलभीकरण करण्याचा प्रयत्न जोरदार फसला आहे.