मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च 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: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Thursday, November 05, 2026

About Leaving Home...John Berger@100

 "the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled". 

Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhyakanda

विशालान् कोसलान् रम्यान् यात्वा लक्ष्मणपूर्वजः।
अयोध्याभिमुखो धीमान् प्राञ्जलिर्वाक्यमब्रवीत्।।2.50.1।।

Having crossed the vast, beautiful kingdom of Kosala, the sagacious elder brother of Lakshmana stood facing Ayodhya with folded palms and said:

आपृच्छे त्वां पुरीश्रेष्ठे काकुत्स्थपरिपालिते।
दैवतानि च यानि त्वां पालयन्ति वसन्ति च।।2.50.2।।

O Ayodhya, the best of cities ruled by those born in the Kakutstha race I take leave of you and of all those gods inhabiting and guarding you.

निवृत्तवनवासस्त्वामनृणो जगतीपतेः।
पुनर्द्रक्ष्यामि मात्रा च पित्रा च सह सङ्गतः।।2.50.3।।

On completion of exile and my filial obligations to king Dasaratha, lord of the world, discharged, I shall, reunited with my parents, see you again.

तो रुधिरताम्राक्षो भुजमुद्यम्य दक्षिणम्।
अश्रुपूर्णमुखो दीनोऽब्रवीज्जानपदं जनम्।।2.50.4।।

He looked miserable, his copperred eyes filled with tears. He raised his right hand and said to the villagers who had come to see him

 WALTER DE LA MARE, 1925

"....No, no. Why further should we roam,
Since every road man journeys by
Ends on a hillside far from home
Under an alien sky;..."

 John Berger, 'Rembrandt', Oct 15, 2015:

"...Nobody today knows precisely who or what the painting represented for the painter. The rider’s coat is typically Polish—a kontusz. Likewise the rider’s headgear. This is probably why the painting was bought by a Polish nobleman in Amsterdam, and taken to Poland at the end of the 18th century.

When I first saw the painting in the Frick Collection in New York, where it ended up, I felt it might be a portrait of Rembrandt’s beloved son, Titus. It seemed to me—and it still does—a painting about leaving home.

A more scholarly theory suggests that the painting may have been inspired by a Pole, Jonaz Szlichtyng, who, during Rembrandt’s time in Amsterdam, was something of a rebel-hero in dissident circles. Szlichtyng belonged to a sect that followed the 16th-century Sienese theologian Lebo Sozznisi, who denied that Christ was the son of God—for, if he were, the religion would cease to be monotheistic. If the painting was inspired by Jonaz Szlichtyng it offers an image of a Christlike figure, who is a man, only a man, setting out, mounted on a horse, to meet his destiny..."


 Rembrandt, The Polish Rider (c. 1655). Oil on canvas

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