Bush and Trump: How To Cool & Save The Earth and Notre Dame Cathedral

Artist: R K Laxman, The Times of India, June 9 2007

Donald J. Trump on Twitter on April 15 2019:

Odour From a Clammy Cave on the Eiger Glacier: Titanic

#TitanicSinking107
 
107 years ago, on April 15 1912, RMS Titanic sank

"Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like [sniffing, pondering]  victory. Someday this war's gonna end..."
 (Apocalypse Now, 1979)

E O Wilson:
"Our greatest weakness, however, is our pitifully small sense of taste and smell. Over 99 percent of all living species, from microorganisms to animals, rely on chemical senses to find their way through the environment. They have also perfected the capacity to communicate with one another with special chemicals called pheromones. In contrast, human beings, along with monkeys, apes, and birds, are among the rare life forms that are primarily audiovisual, and correspondingly weak in taste and smell. We are idiots compared with rattlesnakes and bloodhounds. Our poor ability to smell and taste is reflected in the small size of our chemosensory vocabularies, forcing us for the most part to fall back on similes and other forms of metaphor. A wine has a delicate bouquet, we say, its taste is full and somewhat fruity. A scent is like that of a rose, or pine, or rain newly fallen on the earth.
We are forced to stumble through our chemically challenged lives in a chemosensory biosphere, relying on sound and vision that evolved primarily for life in the trees. Only through science and technology has humanity penetrated the immense sensory worlds in the rest of the biosphere. With instrumentation, we are able to translate the sensory worlds of the rest of life into our own. And in the process, we have learned to see almost to the end of the universe, and estimated the time of its beginning. We will never orient by feeling Earth’s magnetic field, or sing in pheromone, but we can bring all such information existing into our own little sensory realm."

Titanic has earlier appeared on this blog twice here and here.

In the past year,  I came across the following and realized how no book or movie can quite capture that: smell!

“...The fifth night of the maiden voyage was moonless: a flat sea, an unclouded sky, with stars gleaming in the frosty air. “Grand weather,” said John Poingdestre, a member of the deck crew, but “terribly cold.” After five thirty on Sunday evening, the sharp fall in temperature drove all but the hardiest passengers indoors. It was so chill that smart women in flimsy dresses retreated to their cabins early. Eloise Smith, for example, who had dined with her husband in the Café Parisien, left him at ten thirty and went to bed. Elizabeth Shutes, the American governess of the Graham family, wrote afterward: “Such a biting cold air poured into my state room that I could not sleep, and the air had so strange an odour, as if it came from a clammy cave. I had noticed the same odour in the ice cave on the Eiger glacier.” She lay in her berth shivering until she switched on her electric stove, which threw a cheerful red glow...” 

(Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘Collision’ from ‘Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From’, 2012)

Artist: Edward Sorel, The New Yorker, March 6 1995

मर्दांच्या बंदुका उडाल्या मुलाबायकांत ...Kusumagraj, Jallianwala Bagh@100

#JallianwalaBaghMassacre100

कृतज्ञता : कुसुमाग्रज, वि वा शिरवाडकर यांच्या कार्याचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स

 Ferdinand Mount LRB एप्रिल २०१९ च्या अंकामध्ये लिहतात "प्रमुख मर्दाबद्दल":
".... Dyer died in 1927, after suffering several strokes. He was given a military funeral at Long Ashton, the village near Bristol to which he and his wife, Annie, had retired. But then, amazingly, he had a second great ceremonial funeral through the streets of London, his body carried on a gun carriage draped in the Union flag, from the Guards’ Chapel to St Martin-in-the-Fields. Wagner underplays the extraordinary fact of this rite, normally reserved for a national hero, being accorded to a disgraced temporary brigadier..."

कोलंबसाचे गर्व (शरम) गीत....How Mean Columbus Could Be!

कुसुमाग्रजांचे "कोलंबसाचे गर्वगीत", १९३६ ही एक मराठीतील cult कविता आहे.  (पहा 'विशाखा', १९४२/२००३, पृष्ठ ५६-५७) 

कोलंबसाचे खरे रूप जगासमोर १९३६साली मोठ्या प्रमाणात आले नव्हते. ते शिरवाडकरांना माहित असते तर त्या कवितेचे नाव नक्कीच वेगळे असते.

वि स खांडेकर फेब्रुवारी १९४२ साली 'विशाखा' साठी लिहलेल्या अर्ध्यदानात (प्रस्तावनेत) या कवितेबद्दल म्हणतात : "... मानवतेचे निशाण मिरवू महासागरात /  जिंकुनी खंड खंड सारा' या कोलंबसच्या गीतातल्या त्यांच्या ओळी नवे जग निर्मू पाहणाऱ्या मानवालाही मार्गदर्शक आहेत ! नाही का?..." (पहा 'विशाखा', १९४२/२००३, पृष्ठ १५) 

कोलंबसचा आणि मानवतेचा काहीही संबंध नव्हता: “...As an explorer, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea is widely seen as an opportunist who made his great discovery without ever acknowledging it for what it was, and proceeded to enslave the populace he found, encourage genocide, and pollute relations between peoples who were previously unknown to each other. He was even assumed to have carried syphilis back to Europe with him to torment Europe for centuries thereafter. He excused his behavior, and his legacy, by saying that he merely acted as God’s instrument, even as he beseeched his Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, to enrich him and his family. Historians have long argued that Columbus merely rediscovered the Americas, that the Vikings, the Celts, and American Indians arrived in the “New World” long before his cautious landfall....”

त्यामुळे तिथेच ती कविता कोलंबसची रहात नाही....शिवाय कवितेत कोलंबसच्या एकाही सफरीच्या हार्डफॅक्टस नाहीत. त्यामुळे कवितेचे नाव केंव्हाही बदलता आले असते...

मी Laurence Bergreen यांचे 'Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504', २०११ हे पुस्तक वाचत आहे. आधीचे इंग्लिश अवतरण त्यातीलच आहे.

पहिल्या सफरी मध्ये सुरवातीलाच काय झाले ते पहा.

““I sailed to the West southwest, and we took more water aboard than at any other time on the voyage,” wrote Christopher Columbus in his logbook on Thursday, October 11, 1492, on the verge of the defining moment of discovery. It occurred not a moment too soon, because the fearful and unruly crews of his three ships were about to mutiny. Overcome with doubt himself, he had tried to remind the rebels of their sworn duty, “telling them that, for better or worse, they must complete the enterprise on which the Catholic Sovereigns”—Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, who jointly ruled Spain—“had sent them.” He could not risk offending his royal patrons, whom he lobbied for ten years to obtain this commission, and so he insisted, “I started out to find the Indies and will continue until I have accomplished that mission, with the help of Our Lord.” And they had better follow his lead or risk a cruel punishment.

Suddenly it seemed as if his prayers had been answered: “I saw several things that were indications of land.” For one thing, “A large flock of sea birds flew overhead.” And for another, a slender reed floated past his flagship, Santa María, and it was green, indicating it had grown nearby. Pinta’s crew noticed the same thing, as well as a “manmade” plank, carved by an unknown hand, perhaps with an “iron tool.” Those aboard Niña spotted a stick, equally indicative that they were approaching land. He encouraged the crew to give thanks rather than mutiny at this critical moment, doubled the number of lookouts, and promised a generous reward to the first sailor to spot terra firma.

And then, for hours, nothing.

Around ten o’clock that night, Columbus anxiously patrolled the highest deck, the stern castle. In the gloom, he thought he saw something resembling “a little wax candle bobbing up and down.” Perhaps it was a torch belonging to fishermen abroad at night, or perhaps it belonged to someone on land, “going from house to house.” Perhaps it was nothing more than a phantom sighting, common at sea, even for expert eyes. He summoned a couple of officers; one agreed with his assessment, the other scoffed. No one else saw anything, and Columbus did not trust his own instincts. As he knew from experience, life at sea often presented stark choices. If he succeeded in his quest to discover the basis of a Spanish empire thousands of miles from home, he would be on his way to fulfilling his pledge to his royal sponsors and attaining heroic status and unimaginable wealth. After all the doubts and trials he had endured, his accomplishment would be vindication of the headiest sort. But if he failed, he would face mutiny by his obstreperous crew, permanent disgrace, and the prospect of death in a lonely patch of ocean far from home....

....He would spend the rest of his life—and three subsequent voyages—attempting to make good on that pledge. Many in Europe were inclined to dismiss Polo’s account, by turns fantastic and commercial, as a beguiling fantasy, while others, Columbus especially, regarded it as the pragmatic travel guide that Polo intended. His attempt to find a maritime equivalent to Marco Polo’s journey to Asia bridged the gap between the medieval world of magic and might, and the stark universe of predator and prey of the Renaissance. Although Marco Polo had completed his journey two hundred years earlier, Columbus nevertheless expected to find the Mongol empire intact, and Kublai Khan, or another Grand Khan like him, alive and well and ready to do business. But Kublai was long gone, and his empire in ruins.

Protected by his delusion, Columbus conveniently concluded that he had reached an island or peninsula on the outskirts of China, a leap made possible only by omitting the Americas and the Pacific Ocean from his skewed geography. And as for the promised reward, which should have gone to the humble seaman, Rodrigo de Triana, who had first sighted land, Columbus decided that his own vision of the glowing candle took precedence, and so he kept the proceeds for himself.”

त्या कोत्या मनाच्या कोलंबसाने साधे जमीन दिसल्याचे बक्षीस सुद्धा आपल्या खलाशाला (Rodrigo de Triana) न देता स्वतःच्या खिशात टाकले!

Artist: Mastroianni and Hart

महान साहित्य आणि बालपण हातात हात घालून असतात....Orson Welles and G. A. Kulkarni

ऑर्सन वेल्स आणि जी. ए. कुलकर्णी पूर्वी सुद्धा या ब्लॉग वर एकत्र आले आहेत, उदा.  एप्रिल ८ २०१८ रोजी इथे.

फेब्रुवारी २०१९ मध्ये मी हे पहिले: Christophe Honoré’s यांच्या दहा आवडत्या सिनेमात वेल्स यांच्या 'The Magnificent Ambersons', १९४२चा समावेश आहे. तो सिनेमा माझा सुद्धा अत्यंत आवडता सिनेमा आहे- ती मला कविताच वाटते.

Honoré म्हणतात : "The Magnificent Ambersons is the most important of films for a director. It’s because of Welles, because he repeats to us, again and again, that cinema and childhood go hand in hand. And that theater is the birth of cinema."

हे वाचून मला जी. एंची 'कैरी' ('सुगंध', १९७३ समाविष्ट 'पिंगळावेळ', १९७७) आठवली: "पुन्हा पुन्हा जीए आपल्याला सांगतात की महान साहित्य आणि बालपण हातात हात घालून असतात"

आणि काय योगायोग आहे पहा The Magnificent Ambersons हा जी.एंच्या वाढदिवसाला १९४२साली प्रदर्शित झाला होता!

खाली डावीकडे अँन बॅक्सटर पहा.... ह्या दर्जाचे उत्कृष्ट अभिनय आणि सौन्दर्य यांचे मिश्रण कमी बघायला मिळते...

आणि म्हणून चेकॉव्ह वाचायचे नाहीत तर त्यांचे आयुष्य वाचायचे ....Chekhov? What's Pleasurable About That?

'Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey,', २००१  हे जेनेट माल्कम (Janet Malcom) यांचे सुंदर पुस्तक वाचतोय... आणि त्या पुस्तकातून एखादा लेखक आपण न वाचता सुद्धा तो /ती आपल्या आयुष्याच्या मार्गावरील  कसा मार्गदीपक होऊ शकतो हे समजले....

खालील उताऱ्यात मास्कोच्या दक्षिणेला ४०किमी अंतरावर Melikhovo येथील चेकॉव्ह यांचे घर बघायला माल्कम गेल्यात. सोनिया ह्या माल्कम यांच्या मुख्य गाईड आहेत आणि Ludmilla ह्या घर दाखवण्यापुरत्या गाईड आहेत. 

“....Although I recognized the house, I was actually seeing not the one in the photographs—which had been torn down in the 1920s—but a replica, built in the late ’40s. (Resurrecting destroyed buildings seems to be a national tic. In Moscow I saw a huge church with gold domes that was a recently completed replica of one of the churches Stalin wantonly tore down.) The interiors of Melikhovo had been carefully restored, re-created from photographs supplied by Maria Chekhova, then in her eighties. The rooms were small and appealingly furnished; they gave a sense of a pleasant, very well-run home. The walls were covered with Morris-print-like wallpapers, and over them paintings and family photographs hung in dense arrangements. Everything was simple, handsome, unaffected. But I think that Chekhov would have found it absurd. The idea of rebuilding his house from scratch would have offended his sense of the fitness of things. I can imagine him walking through the rooms with a look of irony on his face as he listened to the prepared speech of our tour guide, Ludmilla. Ludmilla was a youngish woman with glasses, dressed in trousers and a shabby maroon snow jacket, who was full of knowledge of Chekhov’s life but had read little of his work. She spoke of Chekhov with a radiant expression on her face. She told me (through Sonia) that a good deal of the furniture and many objects in the house were original; when the house was being torn down the local peasants had sacked it, but during the restoration returned much of what they had taken. I asked if they had been forced to do so by the Soviet authorities, and she said, “Oh, no. They did so gladly. Everyone loved Anton Pavlovich.” When I questioned her about how she came to be working at the museum she gave a long reply: She had never been able to read Chekhov; his writing left her cold. But one day she visited Melikhovo (she lived in a nearby town) and while in the house had had some sort of incredible spiritual experience, which she cannot explain. She kept returning to Melikhovo—it drew her like a magnet—and finally the director of the museum had given her a job.

After finishing her tour of the ersatz house and the disorderly garden, Ludmilla walked out to the exit with Sonia and me, and from her answer to one of my questions it appeared that she wasn’t paid for her work. “So you work here as a volunteer,” I said. “No,” she said, she just wasn’t paid, the way many people in Russia were not being paid now. Wages were frequently “delayed” for months, even years. I asked Ludmilla how she lived if she wasn’t paid. Did she have another job that did pay? Sonia—not relaying my question—looked at me angrily and said, “We will not talk about this. This is not your subject. We will talk about Chekhov.”

I debated with myself whether to challenge Sonia, and decided I would. I said, “Look, if we’re going to talk about Chekhov, we need to say that Anton Pavlovich cared about truth above all else. He did not look away from reality. People not being paid for work is something he would have talked about—not brushed away with ‘Let’s talk about Chekhov.’ ” I sounded a little ridiculous to myself—like someone doing an imitation of a character in a socialist realist novel—but I enjoyed Sonia’s discomposure, and when she started to answer I cut her off with “Tell Ludmilla what I just said.” Sonia obeyed, and Ludmilla, smiling her sweet smile, said, “This is why I find it hard to read Chekhov. There is too much sadness in it. It is his spirituality that attracts me—the spirituality I receive from learning about his life.”...”

Artist : Alain, The New Yorker, February 20 1943