Doctor Fischer of Geneva, Or, the Bomb Party...How Life Imitated Art

 Since I read Graham Greene's 'Doctor Fischer of Geneva, Or, the Bomb Party', 1980,  sometime in 1980's, the book has stayed with me because I have found more and more people behaving like either Doctor Fischer or his toadies...especially my relatives....

"...But it was not for his money that I detested Doctor Fischer. I hated him for his pride, his contempt of all the world, and his cruelty. He loved no one, not even his daughter..."

"...Anna-Luise called them 'Toads', her English not being perfect. She meant, of course, toadies, but I soon adopted the title which she had given them. Among the Toads was an alcoholic film actor called Richard Deane, a Divisionnaire ~ a very high rank in the Swiss army, which only has a general in time of war ~ called Krueger, an international lawyer named Kips, a tax adviser, Monsieur Belmont, and an American woman with blue hair called Mrs Montgomery. The General, as some of the others called him, was retired, Mrs Montgomery was satisfactorily widowed, and they all had settled around Geneva for the same reason, either to escape taxes in their own countries or take advantage of favourable cantonal conditions. Doctor Fischer and the Divisionnaire were the only Swiss nationals in the group when I came to know them and Fischer was by a long way the richest. He ruled them all as a man might rule a donkey with a whip in one hand and a carrot in the other. They were very well lined themselves, but how they enjoyed the carrots. It was only for the carrots that they put up with his abominable parties at which they were always first humiliated ('Have you no sense of humour?' I can imagine him demanding at the early dinners) and then rewarded. In the end they learnt to laugh even before the joke was sprung. They felt themselves to be a select group ~ there were plenty of people around Geneva who envied them their friendship with the great Doctor Fischer..."

  Dr. Fischer of Geneva (TV Movie 1984)

गारी गोट्या ...Suggestive Games of Marbles at Miraj

मिरजेला रहात असताना १९७०च्या दशकात मी आणि माझे काही जवळ राहणारे मित्र गारीगोट्यांचे दोन खेळ प्रचंड खेळात असू, अक्षरशः तहानभूक हरपून...  ह्यन्नी-गंड आणि बेंद ... 

त्या दोन्ही खेळांचा आता विचार केला तर वाटते, ते चक्क संभोग किंवा तत्सम कृत्य सूचित करणारे खेळ होते. 

ह्यन्नी-गंड (हे शब्दांचे मूळ कन्नडा मध्ये आहे hennu-ganda आणि त्याचा अर्थ स्त्री-तिचा पती असा आहे) खेळात एक छोटा खड्डा असे त्याला आम्ही गद म्हणत असू, आणि त्यात गोटी घालणे हा एक भाग असे... 

सोबतचे नॉर्मन रॉकवेल यांचे चित्र मात्र त्या सगळ्यापासून दूरचे वाटते.... 

 Marble Champion by Norman Rockwell (1939)

Rear Windows...Genius of André François

 कै. वसंत सरवटे यांनी त्यांच्या काही पुस्तकांत शब्दहीन, विशेषतः फ्रेंच, कार्टूनच्या महानतेची उदाहरणे दिली आहेत... 

त्या दर्जाचे हे André François (1915-2005) यांचे कार्टून मला वाटले ... पटकन मला हिचकॉक यांचा Rear Windows , १९५४ हा सिनेमाच आठवला...

10 dead people who have had the greatest impact on your worldview?

Question on X from General of sacred water @sacred_general was:

in no particular order, which 10 dead people have had the greatest impact on your worldview? 

 

in February 2024 my answer was:

Ram,

Krishna,

Shivaji,

Eknath,

Tukaram,

Niccolo Machiavelli

Arthur Schopenhauer,

Einstein,

W H Auden,

G A kulkarni

Arthashastra, Book 16, Chapter 3, Mauryan Times, Ganapati...कौटिल्य अर्थशास्त्र, द ग गोडसे, अष्टविनायक

जुलै ५ २०२३ रोजी ट्विटर वर John Oldman @PrasunNagar यांच्या हॅन्डल वर खालील वाचले, कौटिल्य अर्थशास्त्रात मौर्य काळात पूजल्या जाणाऱ्या देव-देवतांची यादी... 

दुर्गाबाईंनी मराठीत अनुवाद झालेल्या एका कौटिल्य अर्थशास्त्राला दीर्घ प्रस्तावना लिहली आहे...

Arthashastra, Book 16, Chapter 3, mentions the following deities who were worshipped in Mauryan times:

1) Aparajita (Durga),
2) Aparatihata ( Vishnu) ,
3) Jayanta,  
4) Kumara (Skanda),
5) Vaijanta (Indra),
6) Shiva,
7) Vaisravana ( Kuber),
8) Asvins,
9) Sri ( Laxmi)

माझ्या लगेच लक्षात आले की ह्यात गणपती नाही , आणि त्याच बरोबर दुर्गाबाईंचे एक सह अभ्यासक आणि सहलेखक द ग गोडसे यांचा 'दिवाळी १९७५ मध्ये लिहलेला 'अष्टविनायक' हा लेख आठवला...

तो लेख आता गोडसे यांच्या 'समन्दे तलाश', १९८१ ह्या पुस्तकात समाविष्ट आहे. त्यातील पृष्ठ ११९ वरील काही भाग मी सोबतच्या चित्रात जोडला आहे.

गणपती नाही कारण "पुराणोक्त उपासनेचे गणपती हे दैवत अर्वाचीन असून त्याची पुराणोक्त उपासनाही तेवढीच अर्वाचीन ठरते."... 

 

सौजन्य: गोडसे यांच्या साहित्याचे कॉपी राईट होल्डर्स

When Active Partnership Existed between Writer and Illustrator

Dinah Birch, TLS, June 23 2023, review of  "THE ART OF THE REPRINT:Nineteenth-century novels in twentieth-century editions" by Rosalind Parry

"... llustrated novels – except those written for children – have now fallen out of favour in mainstream publishing, though they have found a different kind of vitality in the development of the graphic novel. But many nineteenth-century novels were written with the power of illustration very much in the author’s mind. Charles Dickens’s career as a novelist began when he was asked to supply descriptions to supplement a series of comic sporting plates – a project that morphed into The Pickwick Papers, the origin of his long working relationship with the artist Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”). Much of Anthony Trollope’s fiction was first published with accompanying illustrations, and he took a keen interest in their effect on his readers. In Orley Farm, published at the height of his success in the early 1860s, he highlights a drawing by John Everett Millais (his favourite illustrator) to make a point about Lady Mason, the novel’s central character:

In an early part of this story I have endeavoured to describe how this woman sat alone, with deep sorrow in her heart and deep thought on her mind, when she first learned what terrible things were coming on her. The idea, however, which the reader will have conceived of her as she sat there will have come to him from the skill of the artist, and not from the words of the writer. If that drawing is now near him, let him go back to it.

Such moments of deference to an artist’s achievement are rare, but active partnerships between writer and illustrator were not...."

 artist; Sir John Everett Millais , 1861-62

Why was Unpastoralized Germany So Wealthy by 1960s?

I read on twitter following: 

 

"We don't realize how badly Nehru/Indira ran India, After WW2, USA gave $13 billion to Europe, $10 billion to India, Germany had been bombed to dust in WW2,

By 1960s, they were giving aid to India, In 1974, after 27 yrs of Cong rule, India still begging US, UK & Canada for food" 

 

(Abhishek @AbhishBanerj, Jun 26)

 

I have witnessed how socialism inflicted upon Indian poor and middle-class untold misery for almost 50 years since independence but I have a problem with Germany's wealth by 1960s...

 

Read a small para from David de Jong's recent bestseller book "Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties": 

 

"...But this book isn’t just about the sins of Germany’s titans of industry and finance. Here too is the story of how, after the war, it fell to the victorious Allies to decide the fate of these Nazi profiteers. But for the sake of political expediency, and for fear of the looming threat of Communism, the United States and the United Kingdom quietly handed most of these tycoons back over to Germany, which in turn allowed most of the guilty moguls to walk free, with little more than a slap on the wrist. In the decades that followed, the western part of a divided Germany developed one of the world’s most prosperous economies, and those same Nazi businessmen amassed billions of dollars, joining the ranks of the world’s wealthiest tycoons. All the while they kept silent, or outright lied, about their ties to genocide.

 

As of today, a small few of these men’s heirs have truly reckoned with the family past. Others still refuse to do so, with little negative effect. ..."

 

If Germany's money had been taken away from them by the allies at the end of WWII, Germany too might be asking for money just like India in 1960s...I am not alone in such thinking...

 

Evan Thomas, 'Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II", 2023:

 

"...When Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau recommended that Germany be “pastoralized”—its industry plowed under—Stimson vigorously protested, not just because it would weaken postwar Europe’s recovery but because Germany might become a wasteland of starving peasants. In his diary, he noted that “it is very singular that I, the man who had charge of the Department which did all the killing in the war, should be the only one to have any mercy for that other side.” ..."

 

Threat of communism kept Germany wealthy, no wonder the current German leadership is doing the bidding of the allies by making threats to Russia because of their war with Ukraine....

 

I never believed for one second that the country responsible for tens of millions of deaths across the world just 75+ years ago has bounced back so much and so hard without using illegitimate resources.

 

 

G. A. Kulkarni, Herman Hesse...Siddhartha Had More of Nietzsche in him than of Buddha...जी, ए. कुलकर्णी, हर्मन हेस

#GAKULKARNI101

जी, ए. कुलकर्णी म. द. हातकणंगलेकरांना ४. ७. ८० रोजी लिहतात :

 

"...I have felt very near to Hesse, for one simple reason. He does not mind being very very old fashioned....I doubt whether he can imagine , what may be loosely called ultimate. Reality without accepting God..."

(पृष्ठ २३७, 'जी.एं. ची निवडक पत्रे: खंड ४', २००६/२०२०')

 

जीएंना खरे हर्मन हेस फार समजले असे वाटत नाही...

 

जॉन ग्रे त्यांच्या ५ डिसेंबर २०१८ च्या न्यू स्टेट्समन मधील लेखात म्हणतात :

 

"... A lifelong narcissist, Hesse pursued relief from his own worries more than anything else. Even his secluded life in Switzerland, where his home was fronted by a sign saying “No Visitors”, did not give him the distance from the world he craved... If Hesse returned from the East to another bout of depression, one reason was that the goal of the religions he had been half-heartedly exploring was the opposite of what he was looking for. Hesse wanted self-realisation, whereas Eastern ¬mysticism aimed at the dissolution of the self. As Decker notes, Hesse’s Siddhartha had more of Nietzsche in him than of Buddha. For Hesse’s protagonist, as for Hesse himself, “It was not a question of renouncing the Self but of finding it. This was a very Western line of thought.” ... Hesse’s Magister Ludi remains a strangely insubstantial figure – not unlike Hesse himself. Apart from his overweening egotism, there is very little that is distinctive in this prophet of individuality. Though he made much of Jung’s theory of the divided self, Hesse was himself a man without a shadow."

 

जीएंना हेस यांचे "secluded life" आवडले होते काय?

 

जीएंना हेसची जवळीक वाटण्याचे कारण हे असू शकते:हेस जीएंसारखे चांगले चित्रकार होते आणि, जीएं जे हवे होते पण जमले नाही, तसे कवी सुद्द्धा!

 

"In 1912 he moved to Switzerland, where he wrote his best-known books, including the classic Siddhartha; composed poetry; and painted landscapes."

 

सोबतच्या चित्राचे नाव : At Agra , चित्रकार : Herman Hesse, वर्ष : १९१९

 

 

 

सुपरहिरो गणवेश काढेपर्यंत अंग कस खाजवतात?...My Holy of Holies is the Human Body

सध्या सुपरहिरोंचा जमाना आहे... 

मला लहानपणी सुपरहिरो वेताळ (Phantom) पासून माहित झाले... 

आणि एक प्रश्न मला भेडसावत आला आहे: ते सुपरहिरोचा गणवेश काढेपर्यंत अंग कस खाजवतात? कारण भारतासारख्या देशात माझ्या सारख्याला अधून मधून कुठेतरी स्वतःचे अंग खाजवायला लागत असते.... आणि सुपरहिरोंचे कपडे सुद्धा अगदी tight आणि कदाचित सुती सुद्धा नसावेत.. 

त्याचे उत्तर सोबतच्या कार्टून मध्ये बहुदा Wonder Woman साठी तरी मिळाले, कलाकार माहित नाही... 

Eva Marie Saint@100