व्हिएतनाम युद्ध संपल्याला ५० वर्षें झाली ...Paulette in Vietnam

 व्हिएतनाम युद्ध हा ह्या पोस्टचा विषय नसून, त्यावर प्रसिद्ध झालेले एक कॉमिक्स  हा आहे ... 

"Paulette", 1971 written by Georges Wolinski and drawn by  Georges Pichard

Paulette was the daughter of a Parisian industrialist and traveled to Indochina with a friend. During the flight, there was a hijacking and gunshots, the jet depressurized and crashed in the middle of war-torn Vietnam. They survived and the North American saved them..

Speech bubbles were translated thus:

Soldier: "Here comes the helicopter."......... 

Paulette: He talks like a bus ! .......... 

Paulette: "Come out, animal" (frog in briefs).

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ह्या चित्रात प्लुटोच्या कृष्णलोकातील सर्विरस नाही...Orpheus by Roelandt Savery, G A Kulkarni and Sadanand Rege

 

जी. ए. कुलकर्णी यांचा ऑर्फियस त्याच्या संगीताने अक्राळविक्राळ सर्विरस ला सुद्धा शांत करून पुढे जातो...त्याच्या संगीताचे जीए वर्णन असे करतात:

 

"... ऑर्फियसने उत्कंठेने वाद्य हातात घेतले व स्वर निर्माण करण्यास सुरवात केली... त्यावेळी हातांतील कंकणांचा आवाज करत, आंतरसालीसारख्या कोवळ्या पावलांनी सूर्यप्रकाश सरकवत एक सौन्दर्यवती युवती आली, आणि निर्भर आनंदाने तिने ओंजळभर फुले उचलली..."

(पृष्ठ ५, 'ऑर्फियस', 'पिंगळावेळ', १९७७)

 

 

सदानंद रेगे:

"...

ऑर्फियस

सांभाळ रे बाळा !

मागे वळून पाहिलंस

तर गर्भार सुरांचा

जळून जाईल गाभा...

.... "

('केसरबाई'., ब्रांकुशीचा पक्षी)

 

 

Orpheus by Roelandt Savery, 1628

"Orpheus charms the animals with music in this painting by an artist who was fascinated by nature. Painting at a time when the curiosity of the Renaissance was giving birth to modern science, Savery spent part of his career at the court of the eccentric emperor Rudolf II in Prague, where natural wonders were collected and the astonomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler employed. His most famous painting today is The Dodo – – one of the few images of this now extinct bird that may record its living appearance. There doesn’t seem to be a dodo in this idyllic, blue-tinged landscape but lions, a pelican, an elephant, swans, deer, cattle, goats and a peacock are among the many creatures drawn together by the sweet music of Orpheus. They are all at peace: a hunting dog seems to want to make friends with a stag.", The Guardian, August 2024

Love In Tokyo was Released in 1966!...Sayonara Sayonara Babies

 In Japan, there was a 25% dip in births in 1966 as shown in the graph below

आचार्य अत्रे यांचा अप्टन सिंक्लेर...Has India Produced Her Own Upton Sinclair?

David Denby, The New Yorker, 2006:

"A hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair, the muckraker and socialist, brought out “The Jungle,” a sensationally grim exposé of the noisome squalors and dangers of the meatpacking industry. Dedicated to “the workingmen of America,” the book became an overnight best-seller. At the White House, Theodore Roosevelt, who had watched soldiers die from eating rotten meat during the Spanish-American War, wrote a three-page appreciation and critique of the novel, and sent it to Sinclair with an invitation to visit him. (Those were the days.) “The Jungle” played a major role in pushing forward the Pure Food and Drug Act, which Roosevelt had long favored, and which was passed in June of 1906, marking a major expansion of federal regulatory power. The book’s influence hit the dinner table as well: after a couple of years, meat consumption declined, and it was widely believed that Sinclair’s book was the cause. By common consent among literary historians, only one American novel, before or since—Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—has had so powerful an influence on practical affairs...."

अप्टन सिंक्लेर यांच्या एकाही पुस्तकाचा अनुवाद मराठीत झाला आहे का हे मला माहित नाही. 

मी त्यांचे नाव क्वचितच मराठी लेखनात पाहिले आहे. त्यामुळे आचार्य अत्र्यांचा  १९६३ सालचा "अप्टन सिंक्लेर" हा प्रदीर्घ लेख वाचून आश्चर्य वाटले . (पहा 'आषाढस्य प्रथम दिवसे: 'मराठा' तील अग्रलेख', पृष्ठ ३२६-३३३, १९६९-२०२२).

अत्रे  सिंक्लेर.यांच्या गाजलेल्या जंगल, १९०६  या कांदंबरीचे परीक्षण विस्ताराने करतात. अशा कादंबऱ्या मराठीत  किंवा  भारतीय भारतीय भाषेत निर्माण झाल्या का, असा प्रश्न मला पडला. 

उदाहरणार्थ भोपाळच्या युनियन कार्बाइड किंवा अशा अनेक  कंपन्यांवर जंगल सारखी कांदबरी निर्माण झाली असती तर तिथली भयानक दुर्घटना टळली असती का?  आजही भारतात अनेक केमिकल कंपन्या आहेत....

अत्र्यांच्या लेखातील एक पान पहा :

Eric Schlosser writes in his "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal":

"...The working conditions in these meatpacking plants were brutal. In The Jungle (1906) Upton Sinclair described a litany of horrors: severe back and shoulder injuries, lacerations, amputations, exposure to dangerous chemicals, and memorably, a workplace accident in which a man fell into a vat and got turned into lard. The plant kept running, and the lard was sold to unsuspecting consumers. Human beings, Sinclair argued, had been made "cogs in the great packing machine," easily replaced and entirely disposable. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an independent investigation of The Jungle's sensational details. The accuracy of the book was confirmed by federal investigators, who found that Chicago's meatpacking workers labored "under conditions that are entirely unnecessary and unpardonable, and which are a constant menace not only to their own health, but to the health of those who use the food products prepared by them."..."

He further says though:

"...Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906; reprint, New York: Bantam Books, 1981) unfortunately remains the essential starting point for an understanding of America's meatpacking industry today. Nearly a century after the book's publication, many of the descriptive passages still ring true. Sinclair's prescription for reform, however—his call for a centralized, socialized, highly industrialized agriculture—shows how even the best of intentions can lead to disaster...."

 Upton Sinclair by Edward Sorel , The New Yorker, 2006

When there were not so many Superheroes Flying Around....

 Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, who initiated Marvel’s expansion, has said the franchise can return to its former glory by slowing the pace of production. “I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality. And I think that’s exactly what happened. We lost some focus.” He, and Marvel’s many fans, will be holding out for the heroes.

(The Economist, January 11 2024)

When there were not so many superheroes flying around....

William Steig cover illustration for Valentine's Day, 1964 for The New Yorker

बा. सी. मर्ढेकरांवर समर्थ रामदासांच्या बरोबरीने सर्वात जास्त प्रभाव टाकणारा कलावंत... W H Auden's Face... What Must His Balls Look Like

 बा. सी. मर्ढेकरांवर समर्थ रामदासांच्या बरोबरीने सर्वात जास्त प्रभाव टाकणारा कलावंत... ऑडेन ...

Alan Bennett, LRB, May 1985:

"...There will be other memoirs. There are currently at least three published in America that haven’t yet appeared here. In one of them, Auden: An American Friendship by Charles Miller, the peculiar gouging of his face is put down to ‘a medical condition known as the Touraine-Solente-Golé syndrome, which also affected Racine’. The skin seemed to divide up into clints, like the limestone Auden praised, the best remark about that coming, I think, from David Hockney. Auden sat to Hockney, who after tracing those innumerable lines remarked: ‘I kept thinking, if his face looks like this, what must his balls look like.’ At this rate, it can only be a matter of time before we are told that too."

 

The Literary Art, should be Sublimely Difficult—a Current From Beyond that Burns Out the Wire...The Great Gatsby@100

John Updike, ‘This Side of Coherence’, “More Matter: Essays and Criticism”, 1999: 

“…If Hemingway was the master of danger abroad, purposefully experienced in foreign wars and Spanish bullfights and African safaris,Fitzgerald flattered our national consciousness with a sense of domestic danger, of the failure and rebuke that haunt every aspiration, of youthful overreaching swiftly followed by adult collapse, of a native romanticism courting the vengeance of blind destiny—a pattern illustrated in his one well-designed novel, The Great Gatsby….

…The early death of a writer, besides shortening by a few unwritten volumes the shelves of books that weigh on our consciences, confirms our instinct that art, especially the literary art, should be sublimely difficult—a current from beyond that burns out the wire….”

Jeffrey Meyers , WSJ, April 4 2025:

“…“The Great Gatsby” brilliantly expresses major themes of American literature: the idealism and morality of the country’s Midwest (where most of the characters originate and where Nick returns at the end of the novel) in contrast to the disillusionment and corruption of the East (where the novel takes place); the frontier myth of the self-made man. It also portrays the attempt to escape the materialistic present and recapture the innocent past; the predatory power of rich and beautiful women; the limited possibilities of love in the modern world; the heightened sensitivity to the promises of life; the doomed attempt to sustain illusions and recapture the American dream.”

 

 

Gatsby generated by ChatGPT for me

"Here it is—your stylized Great Gatsby moment, captured like a dreamy oil painting. Gatsby stands poised in the golden glow of his mansion, surrounded by the shimmer and swirl of a 1920s party, with Daisy nearby, both of them caught in that fragile moment between longing and illusion."