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."

Sunday, March 21, 2021

माधव जूलियन, डेक्कन एज्युकेशन सोसायटी आणि शेक्सपिअर, १९२५...The Year of Lear



(वरील कविता बा सी  मर्ढेकरांची, असंग्रहित)

माधव जूलियन यांनी ११ ऑक्टोबर १९२५ डेक्कन एज्युकेशन सोसायटीच्या आजीव सभासदत्वाचा राजीनामा दिला. ते त्याच दिवशी संध्याकाळी कवि गिरीश यांच्याकडे गेले होते. त्यांची मनस्थिती अत्यंत वाईट होती. 

त्यांनी गिरीश यांच्या कडून शेक्सपिअर चे किंग लिअर नाटक घेऊन , एका पानावर थांबून , हा भाग मोठ्याने म्हटला:  

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand.

Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.

Thy blood as hotly lusts to use her in that kind

For which thou whip’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear;

Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.

Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.  
 

(20.154–59)

वाचून होताच पुस्तक भिंतीवर फेकून मारले आणि म्हणाले 'That's why Shakespeare is great'... 

(' माधव जूलियन', ले: गं. दे. खानोलकर, १९५१-१९६८, पृष्ठे: १५१-१५२)

 विशेष म्हणजे शेक्सपिअर यांचे मोठे अभ्यासक James Shapiro त्यांच्या 'The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606', २०१५ या पुस्तकात सुद्धा ह्याच ओळींबाबत लिहतात:

"... Shakespeare’s engagement with Harsnett’s book (In 1603, Samuel Harsnett wrote a book, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures which condemned exorcisms performed by Roman Catholic priests in the 1580s. Shakespeare used this book as a source, pulling words and phrases when writing the play King Lear)  deepens over the course of King Lear. The abuse of authority, so transparent in page after page of the Declaration, is a kind of nightmare that Lear at last comes to recognize. For Lear—and for playgoers—at play’s end, authority is shown to be arbitrary, its “great image” a beggar running from a barking dog (20.149–53). In what is arguably the most explicit piece of social criticism in all of his work, Shakespeare has Lear conclude that violence, deception, and hypocrisy in the kingdom are endemic... 

There is the evil that stems from the abuse of authority and there is another kind that cannot be so easily explained by self-interest and the human propensity for cruelty. In King Lear, Shakespeare wrestles with the nature of this kind of evil as well, something that Harsnett, in a book about the demonic, takes as a given but never confronts. Historical events would soon ensure that this question would take on even greater relevance as Shakespeare was finishing King Lear that winter. And he wasn’t done with Harsnett quite yet, or with questions of possession, bewitching, or where evil originates."

खानोलकरांचे पुस्तक वाचून आपल्याला पुरेपूर खात्री पटते की माधव जूलियन यांना त्यांची त्यावेळची स्थिती वर्णायला किंग लिअर पेक्षा चांगले उदाहरण सापडले नसते, आज आपल्याला २०२१ साली सुद्धा सापडणार नाही.... 

"Shakespeare has Lear conclude that violence, deception, and hypocrisy in the kingdom are endemic... " तुम्ही वेगळा निष्कर्ष काढू शकता काय?