जीएंच्या महंताने 'आय, क्लॉडियस' वाचले होते का? G A Kulkarni and Robert Graves

जी ए कुलकर्णी, 'स्वामी'/ 'पिंगळवेळ', १९७७:
(महंत 'स्वामी'ला) "... भोवतालच्या माणसांना एकच मुंडी असती तर ती आपण अत्यंत आनंदाने पिरगाळली असती, असे वाटण्याजोगे क्षण तुझ्या आयुष्यात कधी आले नसतील?..."
 (मूळ प्रसिद्धी:  'दीपावली', १९७३)

Robert Graves, ‘I, Claudius’, 1934:

“...When I returned to Rome I heard that there had open trouble. Caligula had been disturbed one night by the distant noise of the people crowding to the amphitheatre just before dawn, and pushing and struggling to get near the gates, so that when these opened they could get into the front rows of the free seats.

Caligula sent a company of Guards with truncheons to restore order. The Guards were ill-tempered at being pulled from their beds for this duty and struck out right and left, killing a number of people, including some quite substantial citizens. To show his displeasure at having had his sleep disturbed by the original commotion and by the far louder noise that the people made when they scattered screaming before the truncheon charge, Caligula did not appear in the amphitheatre until well on in the afternoon when everyone was worn out by waiting for him, and hungry too. When Leek Green won the first heat there was no applause and even a little hissing.

Caligula leaped angrily from his seat: "I wish you had only a single neck.

I'd hack it through!"...”

Sir John Hurt as Caligula (Aug 0012 – Jan 0041) at the games from TV serial 'I, Claudius', 1976

courtesy: BBC

Sustaining a Benevolent Myth: Like Livia Drusilla, I Want a Good Show

Today August 5 2016, Games of the XXXI Olympiad start

Mary Pilon, The New York Times, July 18 2016:

"...Because sports are a religion, it’s difficult to imagine a world without the Olympics, and to be sure, they have given us many glorious moments. It would be easy to conclude that the Olympic “movement” has lost its way since the time of Coubertin’s lofty vision, but that, as Goldblatt demonstrates, would be to rewrite history, since the idea of a clean and easy way to achieve peace through sport was a benevolent myth in the first place."

Livia Drusilla, 30 January 58 BC – 28 September 29 AD:

 “I've a few words to say to you before these games begin. Well, gather round. Now, these games are being held in honor of my son, Drusus Nero, who was worth the whole lot of you put together. It's my intention that these games shall be remembered long after you're all dead and forgotten even by your nearest and dearest. You're all scum and you know it, but you've a chance here - some of you - to prove that you're a bit more than that. And for those whom death doesn't liberate, there'll be plenty of freedoms handed out afterwards - to say nothing of gold plate and coin. But... I want a good show. I want my money's worth! I don't want any kiss-in-the-ring stuff. And I don't want my family watching two grown men pussyfooting around each other for half an hour before one of them aims a real blow. There's been too much of that in the past. And, don't think you can fool me either because I know every trick in the book, including the pig's blood in the bladder to make it look as if one of you is dead. There's been too much of that too lately. These games are being degraded by the increasing use of professional tricks to stay alive, and I won't have it. So put on a good show and there'll be plenty of money for the living and a decent burial for the dead. And, if not, I'll break this guild up and I'll send the lot of you to the mines in Numidia. That's all I've got to say to you.”

(from Episode 4,  ‘I, Claudius’, 1976 BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves's I, Claudius and Claudius the God.)

                                                       Majestic  Siân Phillips as Livia

                                                                    courtesy: BBC

पहिले महायुद्ध आणि मराठी साहित्य...World War I and Marathi Literature

Jay Winter, Introduction to ‘The Great War and Modern Memory’, 1975 by Paul Fussell:

“…When he published The Great War and Modern Memory in 1975, he set in motion what is now an avalanche of books and articles of all kinds on the First World War. He did much to create the field in which I have worked for the last four decades.

How did he do it? By using his emotion and his anger to frame his understanding of memory, and his insight into the way language frames memory, especially memories of war. War, he knew, is simply too frightful, too chaotic, too arbitrary, too bizarre, too uncanny a set of events and images to grasp directly. We need blinkers, spectacles, shades to glimpse war even indirectly. Without filters, we are blinded by its searing light. Language is such a filter. So is painting; photography; film. The indelible imprint Paul Fussell left on our understanding of war was on how language frames what he termed “modern memory.”

The term is seductively simple but essentially subtle and nuanced. Fussell meant that through writing about war, First World War veterans left us a narrative framework we frequently overlook. Drawing on the literary scholarship of the Canadian critic Northrop Fry, he made these distinctions. Instead of viewing war as epic, the way Homer did, where the freedom of action of the hero, Achilles, was greater than our own, and instead of viewing war as realistic, as Stendhal did in The Charterhouse of Parma or Tolstoy did in War and Peace, with Fabrizio or Pierre exercising the same confusion and freedom of action we, the readers have, Great War writers did something else. They told us of the ironic nature of war, how it is always worse than we think it will be, and how it traps the soldier—no longer the hero—in a field of force of overwhelming violence, a place where his freedom of action is less than ours, where death is arbitrary and everywhere. What had happened in 1914–18, Fussell argued, happened again in later wars, whose narrators built on the painful achievement of the soldier writers of the Great War. Men like Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Gurney were thus sentinels, standing in a long line of men in uniform who were victims of war just as surely as the men they killed and the men who died by their side…”

दुर्गा भागवत:

"...आणि व्यासाचे उच्छिष्ट खाणारे आम्ही? व्यासाची प्रज्ञा तर घालवून बसलोच, पण आमची प्रतिभाही आटली… मानवी अंतरंग असो किंवा बाह्य सृष्टी असो, प्रकृतीचे आकलन, व तेही सूक्ष्म असल्याशिवाय, कल्पना उंचावत नाहीत, भावना संयत होत नाहीत. विभूषित होत नाहीत. आणि म्हणूनच फुलपाखरांचा अभाव हा भारतीय साहित्याच्या अनेक अभांवाचा प्रातिनिधिक अभाव आहे असे मला वाटते… "

विलास सारंग:
 "...१९२० नंतर मराठी बहुजन व दलित समूह  जागृत झाले. त्यांनी लढाऊ हालचालींना प्रारंभ केला..."
(पृष्ठ: ९१-९२, 'वाङ्मयीन संस्कृतीव सामाजिक वास्तव', २०११)

Alexander Watson:

”...The First World War has long been recognized as the twentieth century’s ‘great seminal catastrophe’. Seventy million men were mobilized to fight over the four years and four months that it raged. Nearly ten million people were killed. Communities were destroyed, populations displaced...”

 (‘Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I’, 2014)

साधारण शंभर वर्षांपूर्वी जुलै १ १९१६, पहिल्या महायुद्धातील सोमच्या (Somme) लढाईला सुरवात झाली. ही लढाई म्हणजे मानवी इतिहासातील एक काळकुट्ट प्रकरण आहे.

ही लढाई  मराठी बोलणाऱ्या माणसांना कदाचित वाटते त्यापेक्षा फार जवळची आहे कारण त्यात कित्येक मराठी माणसांनी जीव गमावला आहे. [१२ लाख भारतीय जवानांनी पहिल्या महायुद्धात भाग घेतला आणि त्यातील ७४,००० जणांनी प्राणांची आहुती दिली. दुसऱ्या महायुद्धात ८७,००० वारले; १९७१च्या युद्धात ३,९००; १९६२च्या ३,०००; १९६५च्या ५,३०० जवान शहीद झाले होते. हे सर्व आकडे विकिपेडिया वर आधारित.]

...आणि मराठी मध्ये ह्या सगळ्याची नोंद करणार- 'ऑल क्वायेट ऑन धी वेस्टर्न फ्रंट', १९२९ सारखी कादंबरी तर सोडाच- एकही नावाजलेले पुस्तक त्याकाळात लिहल गेल नाही! ना लिहली गेली एखादी ओवेन वा ससून सारखी अजरामर कविता.

माझ्या मते ह्याचे महत्वाचे कारण म्हणजे महाराष्ट्रातील ब्राह्मणांनी या युद्धातील ऍक्शन मधे जवळ जवळ भाग घेतला नाही आणि महाराष्ट्रातील बहुजन समाज त्यावेळी ललित साहित्यात मोठ्या प्रमाणात उतरला नव्हता.

या युद्धातील एक हृद्य घटना अशी.

'कटचा वेढा' (Siege of Kut) १९१५-१६ मध्ये कितीतरी मराठी भाषिक सैनिक अडकले होते. प्रचंड उपासमार सुरू झाली होती. घोड्याचे मास खाणे हा एकमेव उपाय उरला होता. मराठी सैनिकांनी धर्मभ्रष्ट होऊ म्हणून खायला नकार दिला. शेवटचा उपाय म्हणून त्यांनी शाहू महाराजांना (१८७४-१९२२) विचारल की ते मास खाल्ल तर चालेल का. महाराजांनी त्यांना परवांनगी तर दिलीच पण अतिशय हेलावून टाकणारे पत्र लिहल. ते वाचूनच, मला खात्री आहे, मराठी सैनिकांच्या अंगावर मूठभर मास चढल असेल!

सौजन्य : "राजश्री श्रीशाहूमहाराजांची भाषणे", पृष्ठ १७७-१८०, लोकवाङ्मय गृह, २००९

आता प्रश्न असा पडतो की कुणा ब्राह्मणाने बहुजनांची ही कुर्बानी बघून त्यावर का एखादी कादंबरी लिहली नाही? का महान बालकवींना (१८९०-१९१८) हे पलीकडल्या गल्लीतले, परक्याची लढाई लढताना आलेले वैधव्याचे दुःख दिसल नाही? का एखादा गोडसे भटजी सोमच्या जवळपास फिरत नव्हता? का एखादा बखरकार किमान ऐकलेल्या गोष्टींवर कहाण्या रचत नव्हता? का एखादी तरल नाट्यछटा अशा उपऱ्या प्रदेशात आलेल्या मृत्यूवर लिहली गेली नाही? १८व्या शतकातील 'दुर्दैवी रंगू'  (१९१४, लेखक:चिंतामण विनायक वैद्य) अजून दिसत होती मग वर्तमानातील अभागी गंगू कुठे लपली होती? (पानिपत,१७६१ बद्दल मराठी लोक अजुनही किती भावविवश होतात.)

नकळत पणे (बा.सी.) मर्ढेकर (१९०९-१९५६) यात ओढले गेले ते असे. त्यांच्या कवितेची एक ओळ : 

"पावसाळे आले गेले; दोन युद्धे जमा झाली;"

कै दि के बेडेकरांनी चांगल फटकारल!

"...'दोन युद्धे जमा झाली' या चार शब्दांत कोट्यावधी भारतीयांच्या, नव्हे सर्व मानवजातीच्याच वेदनांचे व मृत्यूचे ब्रह्मांड सामावलेले आहे. पण मर्ढेकर परमहंसगतीला पोहोचलेले असल्यासारखे आहेत ! त्यांच्या कालप्रवाहाला मनुष्यांच्या सुखदुःखांचे मोजमाप लागत नाही. नुसते पावसाळे येतात नि जातात हीच कालगणना !..."
 ('साहित्य : निर्मिती व समीक्षा', १९५४)

आता थोडी कल्पना करू की मराठीमधे जर पहिल्या महायुद्धावर उत्तम साहित्य निर्मिती झाली असती तर त्याचे परिणाम दूरगामी असू शकते.

(कृपया हे लक्षात घ्यावे की मी तत्कालीन कथा, कादंबऱ्या, नाटक आणि कवितांबद्दल बोलत आहे...तत्कालीन म्हणजे ज्या दुसऱ्या महायुध्दाच्या सुरुवातीपर्यंत, १९३९, लिहल्या गेल्या...तसे पहिल्या महायुद्धाचे उल्लेख तत्कालीन छापील मराठीत पुष्कळ सापडतात.)