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."

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Can You Appreciate Neighbour's Dragon?


Artist: Avi Steinberg, The New Yorker,  October 2017


Richard H. Smith :
“Envy is corrosive and ugly, and it can ruin your life. If you’re an envious person, you have a hard time appreciating a lot of the good things that are out there, because you’re too busy worrying about how they reflect on the self.”
 

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

R K Laxman, Two American Presidents and Amazon fires


Artist: R K Laxman, The Times of India, June 8 2007

I have modified the caption slightly...

"I am sure if Trump comes to know about the fires in the Amazon, he is bound to drop some water bombs and put them out"

Today I see this in my Facebook feed
 

Artist: Mike Luckovich, August 2019

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Heart or Penis?....The Wizard of Oz @80

 #TheWizardofOz80

The Wizard of Oz was released on August 25 1939

Wikipedia:

"In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale befriends the Tin Woodman after they find him rusted in the forest, as he was caught in rain, and use his oil can to release him. He follows her to the Emerald City to get a heart from The Wizard. They are joined on their adventure by the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion."
 



“A heart would be great, sure, but what I’d really like is a working human penis.”  

Artist: Zachary Kanin, The New Yorker, September 2015


Saturday, August 24, 2019

Imagining a Grammar Without Language!...Jorge Luis Borges@120

#JorgeLuisBorges120

Rivka Galchen:

“...In “The False Problem of Ugolino,” an essay on Dante not included in “On Writing,” Borges quotes from an essay by Stevenson that makes the rather Borgesian claim that a book’s characters are only a string of words. “Blasphemous as this sounds to us,” Borges comments, “Achilles and Peer Gynt, Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote, may be reduced to it.” Borges then adds: “The powerful men who ruled the earth, as well: Alexander is one string of words, Attila another.” The great deeds of the past may become no more than words, and no more than words are necessary to summon a power as grand and enduring even as Quixote or Achilles....” 

illustration by Jason Novak,

captioned by Eric Jarosinski

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की....Caterpillar to Dead

दुर्गाबाई भागवत आपल्या 'निसर्गोत्सव', १९९६ सालच्या पुस्तकातील “पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की” या लेखात लिहतात:
"...क्रौंचवध पाहून ज्याचा शोक श्लोकत्व पावला, त्या वाल्मिकीला फुलपाखरू दिसले नाही, मग इतरांना तरी कसे दिसावे?...आणि व्यासाचे उच्छिष्ट खाणारे आम्ही? व्यासाची प्रज्ञा तर घालवून बसलोच, पण आमची प्रतिभाही आटली… मानवी अंतरंग असो किंवा बाह्य सृष्टी असो, प्रकृतीचे आकलन, व तेही सूक्ष्म असल्याशिवाय, कल्पना उंचावत नाहीत, भावना संयत होत नाहीत. विभूषित होत नाहीत. आणि म्हणूनच फुलपाखरांचा अभाव हा भारतीय साहित्याच्या अनेक अभांवाचा प्रातिनिधिक अभाव आहे असे मला वाटते… "


हे मी अलीकडे ट्वीटर (https://twitter.com/spectatorindex) वर पहिले:

Decline in global population, past decade.

Butterflies: 53%
Beetles: 49%
Bees: 46%
Dragonflies: 37%
Flies: 25%

 दुर्गाबाईंना हा दिवस आपल्या मृत्यू नंतर (साल २००२) इतका जवळ आहे असं कधी वाटल असेल? 

"पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की
....
दूर्गेनंतर निम्मी नाश पावले मी
भारतीय साहित्यातूनच केंव्हाच नव्हते विशेष
आतातर जगातूनच नष्ट होत निघाले मी..."

 
Artist: Emily Flake , The New Yorker, August 2019

Sunday, August 18, 2019

मनमुराद...Turkish Cigarette Brand Murad Employing Phallic Imagery


Known as ‘the Turkish cigarette’, Murad was one of many brands employing phallic imagery in their ads, such as this 1919 insert.

Photograph: Courtesy Jim Heimann Collection/ TASCHEN