रशियन-भाषेचे-तुकाराम: पुश्किन@220....Pushkin Did For the Russian Language What Tukaram Did For Marathi

#AlexanderPushkin220

“….Chekalinsky began to deal, his hands trembling. On the right lay a queen, on the left an ace.

“The ace wins!” said Hermann, and he turned over his card.

“Your queen loses,” Chekalinsky said affably.

Hermann shuddered: indeed, instead of an ace, the queen of spades stood before him. He did not believe his eyes, did not understand how he could have drawn the wrong card.

At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades winked and grinned. The extraordinary likeness struck him…

“The old woman!” he cried in horror.

Chekalinsky drew the bank notes to him. Hermann stood motionless. When he left the table, noisy talk sprang up.

“Beautifully punted!” said the players. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards again: the game went on.”

 (Alexander Pushkin, translation by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky) 

Nicholas Lezard:

“…The translator of this volume provides a very good introduction which explains why Pushkin is so popular, to this day, in Russia: "Pushkin did for the Russian language what Chaucer did for English – but with a big difference. Pushkin's Russian is totally of today. He created a vibrant, modern language out of several different strands that needed to be woven together, predominantly vernacular Russian, French and Old Church Slavonic." So one might also add that he did for Russian what Dante did for Italian…” 

James Meek, LRB, June 6 2019:

“....In Russia schoolchildren imbibe his writings like morning milk. His phrases and idioms, like Shakespeare’s, are embedded in the modern language. Interviewed by Elif Batuman after the new translation was published, Volokhonsky talked about the expression Pushkin uses in the story ‘The Blizzard’, ‘smertèl’no vlyublenà’, which she and Pevear translate as ‘mortally in love’. When Volokhonsky asked people in Russia if they used the phrase, they said they did, but that they used it because of Pushkin. Krylov, the writer of Aesopian fables, whose unadorned prose Pushkin admired, ‘used it in the 18th century once, and then Pushkin used it, and after that it became a Russian cliché,’ Volokhonsky said. ‘But what do we do?’

Recently a Russian schoolteacher posted on the internet a list of a few of the ways Russian headline-writers have debased the famous line from Pushkin’s poem The Bronze Horseman, about Peter the Great seeking ‘to cut a window through to Europe’ by building St Petersburg:

    A Kind of Window to Europe

    This Window Is Not to Europe at All

    Kazakhstan to Become China’s Window to Europe

    Russian Capital Cuts Window to Holland/New York/South-East Asia

    Patricia Kaas Cuts Window to the Provinces

    Two Windows Cut to Europe

    Small Ventilation Window Cut to Europe

    No Window to Europe, but a Lurid Balcony

Pushkin lies entombed in the vast mausoleum of his reputation....”

 

Artist: Gennady Yepifanov, 1966 for Pushkin's Queen of Spades

पहिल्यांदा प्लासी, आता निरो...Marathi Political Analyst Simplifies and Distorts History

श्री. भाऊ तोरसेकर आणि श्री सुनील तांबे यांच्या प्लासीच्या लढाईबाबतच्या लेखनाबद्दल मे २८ २०१९ रोजी लिहले. 

आता तोरसेकर रोमचे बादशाह निरो यांच्या बद्दल जून ४ २०१९ रोजी लिहतात :
 "... त्यामुळे रोम जळत असताना फ़िडल वाजवत बसलेल्या निरो नामक सम्राटाचे स्मरण झाले. मुळात निरोने रोम जळत असताना वाद्य वाजवत बसण्यात काहीही गैर नव्हते. कारण तो मनोरुग्ण होता आणि त्याला साधासरळ विचारही करता येत नव्हता. पण याने दिलेली वतने व अनुदाने याच्यावरच ज्यांची गुजराण किंवा चैनमौज चाललेली होती, त्यांना साम्राज्य किंवा देश याची कुठलीही फ़िकीर नव्हती. साम्राज्य वाचवण्यासाठी कोणी खमक्या हुशार राजा त्या जागी आणला तर नक्कीच ते राज्य वाचवणे शक्य होते. पण असा कर्तबगार राजा असल्या फ़ुकट्या बुद्धीमंतांची आधी हाकालपट्टी करण्याची खात्री होती. त्यापेक्षा मनोरुग्ण सम्राट त्यांना कौतुकाचा वाटत होता. यापेक्षा आजच्या कॉग्रेस पक्षाची वा त्याच्या भगतगणांची कहाणी किंचीतही वेगळी नाही...."
हे वाचून मी Barry Strauss यांच्या 'Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors From Augustus to Constantine' , २०१९ या पुस्तकाकडे वळलो.

त्या दहा सीझर मध्ये निरो आहेत. Strauss म्हणतात:

 “…Nero did quite respectably at some of the aspects of his job. He won the support of the common people. He was a great builder. He was a superb impresario. He presided over a cultural renaissance. He loved Greece and won the support of the Greek East. It should also be remembered that for about the first five years of his reign, he had the support of the Senate as well.

Where did Nero fail? By appointing an incompetent governor, he caused a major revolt in Judea. By confiscating property, he stirred up revolt in the Western provinces. By persecuting and executing elite enemies, and by embarrassing himself in the eyes of the elite through his personal behavior, he stirred up conspiracy and revolt.

Nero was the most cultivated and cruelest emperor Rome had seen, and one of the last members of the old Roman nobility to serve as emperor. After Nero, and with the exception of Galba’s brief reign, it would be nearly two hundred years before another member of the Roman nobility served as emperor.

Nero’s predecessors, aristocrats all, were more martial and sometimes madder, but none was more magnificent. None would match his exhibitionism….”

मेरी बिअर्ड त्यांच्या गाजलेल्या 'SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome', २०१५ पुस्तकात म्हणतात :

“…A number of modern historians have presented Nero in particular more as a victim of the propaganda of the Flavian dynasty, starting with Vespasian, which succeeded him, than as a self-obsessed, mother-killing pyromaniac who reputedly started the great fire of 64 CE not just to enjoy the spectacle but also to clear land for building his vast new palace, the Golden House. Even Tacitus admits, the rehabilitators point out, that Nero was the sponsor of effective relief measures for the homeless after the fire; and the reputed extravagance of his new residence, with all its luxuries (including a revolving dining room), did not prevent the parsimonious Vespasian and his sons from taking over part of it as their home. Besides, in the twenty years after Nero’s death in 68 CE at least three false Neros, complete with lyre, appeared in the eastern parts of the empire, making a bid for power by claiming to be the emperor himself, still alive despite all the reports of his suicide. They were all quickly eliminated, but the deception suggests that in some areas of the Roman world Nero was fondly remembered: no one seeks power by pretending to be an emperor universally hated….”

रोमन साम्राज्य १५०० (इसपू २७ - इस १४५३) वर्षे टिकले होते. Julio-Claudian dynasty जरी इ स ६९ मध्ये संपली असली तरी निरो यांच्या नंतर रोमन साम्राज्य १३८५ वर्षे शिल्लक होते. Barry Strauss यांच्या पुस्तकात १० मध्ये निरो यांचा अनुक्रमांक ३ रा आहे आणि त्यानंतर ७ सम्राट येतात.

आता पुन्हा एकदा तोरसेकर काय लिहतात ते वाचा. 

म्हणजे निरोंचा इतिहास सुद्धा , प्लासी सारखा गुंतागुंतीचा आहे आणि त्याचे सुलभीकरण करण्याचा प्रयत्न जोरदार फसला आहे. 

'Nero's Death',  1888 by Vasily Smirnov

सीमारेषा अस्पष्ट आहे, अंधूक आहे: व्हिस्टलर, व्हॅन गो , द ग गोडसे ....A Reality More Real Than Reality

"...Natural आणि supernatural यांतील सीमारेषा अस्पष्ट आहे, अंधूक आहे, असे जी. ए. कुलकर्णी यांना वाटत असे आणि या शोधात असताना त्यांनी अनेक अज्ञात लेखकांची पुस्तके केवळ कुतूहलाने नव्हे तर जबरदस्त ओढ वाटल्यामुळे वाचली होती..."
(पृष्ठ : सव्वीस, 'जी.एं.ची निवडक पत्रे: खंड १', १९९५)

(प्रा म. द. हातकणंगकलेकरांनी जी.ए.न वरती एक लेख लिहला होता, त्याचे शीर्षक : धारवाडचे धुके)

एप्रिल २०१९च्या दि न्यू यॉर्क रिव्ह्यू ऑफ बुक्स मधला Boyd Tonkin यांचा "From Writer to Painter: Van Gogh’s London Pilgrimage" लेख वाचायला सुरुवात  केली  आणि खालील चित्र समोर आले:

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, १८८८

 ... आणि हे चित्र पाहताच व्हिस्टलर आणि गोडसे आठवले... एकही शब्द वाचायच्या आधी... आणि मग हे वाचायला मिळाले आणि ते वाचून खूप आनंद झाला:

".... Van Gogh loved the mysterious cityscapes and moody weather of London, finding a “peculiar beauty” in its suburbs. The visionary qualities of the writers, painters, and engravers he discovered in the city helped to guide his eye and brush until his death, in 1890. They aided his pursuit of “a reality more real than reality,” as he’d put it to Theo, that he mastered in the sensual starbursts of his later paintings, such as Starry Night from 1888, with its firework-like explosions of light reflected as golden pillars in the dark waters of the Rhône at Arles. In the show, it sits alongside a Whistler Nocturne of the shadowy Thames. Van Gogh knew and admired Whistler’s Thames-side scenes. In the clear-skied Midi, clarity and outline would replace the swirling murk of polluted London. But even as Van Gogh’s latitudes changed, his attitudes persisted. In turn, successive generations of Van Gogh emulators and acolytes in Britain drew on his breakthroughs in color and form..."

मी लिहलेली जानेवारी ३० २०१७ ची पोस्ट पहा "गोडसेंचा गोंधळ : कुठाय चांदण्यातील मखमली नीलिमा?...James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Two Nocturnes"

 

 त्या पोस्ट मधील Nocturne च्या संबंधातील  माहिती पुन्हा लिहतो :

कै द ग गोडसेंनी व्हिस्टलर (James Abbott McNeill Whistler) १८३४-१९०३ वरती दोन अप्रतिम लेख लिहले आहेत. ते त्यांच्या 'नांगी असलेले फुलपाखरू', १९८९ पुस्तकाच्या सुरवातीलाच छापले आहेत.

गोडसे व्हिस्टलरांच्या व्यक्तिमत्वावर व कलेवर फार खुष  होते, हे आपल्याला पदोपदी जाणवते....

एका ठिकाणी (पृष्ठ ४०) गोडसे व्हिस्टलर लेखात लिहतात :

वरील वर्णन बऱ्याच प्रमाणात खालील चित्राला लागू आहे.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge, १८७२- ७५

सौजन्य : विकिमीडिया कॉमनस 

  

Nocturne- Blue and Silver - Chelsea, १८७१

 सौजन्य : विकिपीडिया

मला आता राज कपूर , नर्गिस म्हटल्यावर त्यांचा कोणता सिनेमा आठवत नाही तर ...Nargis@90

#Nargis90
 

Today June 1 2019 is 90th birth anniversary of Nargis

नरगिस आणि राज कपूर, यु एस एस आर , १९५४

वरील दृश्य सिनेमातील नाही, भारतीय सिनेमातील बरीच मंडळी ussr ला भेट द्यायला गेली होती त्यावेळी काढलेल्या विडिओतील आहे.

नर्गिस यांच्या नजरेतून प्रेम नुस्त वाहतय... सगळ्या  व्हिडिओ भर ह्या प्रेमाचे प्रत्यंतर मिळत राहते... आपल्याला अर्थातच माहित आहे की ते प्रेम कसे doomed होते ते आणि त्यामुळे त्या सगळ्याला करुणेची झालर आहे

मला आता राज कपूर , नर्गिस म्हटल्यावर त्यांचा कोणता सिनेमा आठवत नाही तर हा सामान्य दर्जाचा पण authentic विडिओ आठ्वतो.