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, December 02, 2022

मराठी माणूस संगीतामध्ये उत्तम रंगतो. चित्रांच्यामध्ये फारच कमी...Frustration of Marathi Cover Artists

Simon Garfield :
"The cliché that you can’t judge a book by its cover is wrong. You clearly can and all you need is a book of cover jackets to prove the nonsense of that phrase."

I wrote about the following cover dated September 1946  by Dinanath Dalal, on the Facebook page dedicated to him, here.

courtesy: Vangmay Shobha magazine and Bookganga.com

I have neither heard of the book nor its author Mr. Shridhar Deshpande (श्रीधर देशपांडे) but I found the cover stunning.

Now will it be fair if the book does not mention its cover artist?

Indeed, if quizzed, I will struggle to point out a few good books published in Marathi in 1940's (1941-1950) but I find some stunning work done by Maharashtra's illustrators and cover artists like Dalal, Godse, Mulgaonkar during the same period.

I bought C. V. Joshi's (चिं. वि. जोशी) book 'Sanchar' (संचार), first published in 1945, on March 28 2010.

I was surprised by the cover. It did not look like the one that was done in 1945. There is no mention of cover artist any where in the book.

By the way, I have seen dozens of Marathi books, by the established writers and the publication houses where there is NO mention of cover artist.

courtesy: copyright holders of the art work

But I was wrong. It was done in 1945.

By some coincidence, I found the same picture on the cover of a (now defunct) Marathi magazine 'Vangmay Shobha' (वाङ्मय शोभा) dated December 1945, the same year the book was first published.


courtesy: the artist, Vangmay-Shobha and Bookganga

Once again there is NO mention of the artist in the magazine. There is just this note by the editor.


But Rajiv Dole (राजीव डोळे) helped confirm in January 2017 that the artist was Dinanath Dalal (दीनानाथ दलाल).... just look at the center-left of the picture, on the road, just below the feet of human figures....there is that very distinctive  signature of Dalal.

Now I will quote substantially from my post on this blog dated September 25 2013.

The late Mr. Vasant Sarwate (वसंत सरवटे) writes in Marathi (मराठी) magazine Lalit (ललित) September 2013:

"...in summation, it can be said that Marathi person enjoys auditory experience more than visual experience An average Marathi person engrosses in music very well. Very little in pictures. Almost none. It's certainly true of ordinary people. But even those writers, poets and critics who are celebrated in Marathi literature, are well known for their talent can't see pictures on the cover and those (if they exist) inside. Let the book be of the other authors' or their own ! Then appreciating them remains a remote thing..."

("...एकूणात, मराठी माणसाला दृश्यापेक्षा श्राव्य अनुभव अधिक भावतात, असं म्हणता येईल. सामान्य मराठी माणूस संगीतामध्ये उत्तम रंगतो. चित्रांच्यामध्ये फारच कमी. जवळजवळ नाहीच. सर्वसामान्यांच्या बाबतीत  तर हे खर आहेच. पण मराठीमध्ये साहित्याचे जाणकार म्हणून किर्ती मिळवलेल्या , प्रतिभावंत म्हणून मान्यता प्राप्त झालेल्या लेखक, कवी, टीकाकार यांना मुखपृष्ठावरच आणि (असतील तर) पुस्तकाच्या आतील चित्र दिसतच नाहीत. पुस्तक इतर लेखकांचे असो किंवा त्याचं स्वतःच असो ! मग त्यांचा आस्वाद घेण तर दूरच...")
 
 The late G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी) himself was an accomplished painter and has written about visual arts in his numerous letters that are now published.

The edition of his 'Ramalkhuna' (रमलखुणा), 1975/ 1988,  that I have, has this cover: 


This edition is published by Mr. Ramdas Bhatkal's (रामदास भटकळ) Popular Prakashan. The book does not mention the cover artist!

Mr. Bhatkal  was a friend of the late Mr. Prabhakar Goray (प्रभाकर गोरे) who has done covers of many of GA's books. He has has written an essay on Goray- length 15 pages- in his book: 'Jigsaw: study in friendship', 1997/1998 ('जिगसॉ: स्टडी इन फ्रेंडशिप' , १९९७/१९९८).

Mr. Bhatkal states in his essay: "...पण हे खंर की  आज जीएंची पुस्तकं जी वाचकांच्या मनात ठसली आहेत त्यात गोरेची चित्रही सामील आहेत..."

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