आधुनिक हिंदच्या खऱ्या नवयुगाचा जन्म या क्रांतिकार्यांच्या विजयानेच होणार आहे ...Karl Marx@200

#KarlMarx200
Today May 5 2018 is 200th birth anniversary of Karl Marx

D K Bedekar, Vangmay Shobha, August 1949:
दि के बेडेकर, वाङ्मय शोभा, ऑगस्ट १९४९:

Mary Gabriel, ‘Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution’:

“...The picture that gradually emerged was of a family that sacrificed everything for an idea the world would come to know as Marxism but which existed in their lifetimes largely inside Karl Marx’s brain. Egress of his ideas was continually thwarted.

The story I discovered was of a love between a husband and wife that remained passionate and consuming despite the deaths of four children, poverty, illness, social ostracism, and the ultimate betrayal, when Marx fathered another woman’s child. It was the story of three young women who adored their father and dedicated themselves to his grand idea, even at the cost of their own dreams, even at the cost of their own children. It was the story of a group of brilliant, combative, exasperating, funny, passionate, and ultimately tragic figures caught up in the revolutions sweeping nineteenth-century Europe. It was, above all, the story of hopes dashed against the bulwark of bitter reality, personal and political...”

 
Jason Barker, The New York Times, April 30 2018:
"...The key factor in Marx’s intellectual legacy in our present-day society is not “philosophy” but “critique,” or what he described in 1843 as “the ruthless criticism of all that exists: ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,” he wrote in 1845...."

आज कार्ल मार्क्स यांची २००वी जयंती.
जीएंनी मार्क्सवादावर सडकून टीका केली आहे. ती माझ्या ब्लॉगच्या एका वर्षांपूर्वीच्या पोस्टवर (http://searchingforlaugh.blogspot.in/…/karl-marx-will-soon-…) आली होती.

"...तेव्हा अखेर प्रत्येकाला जाता जाता स्वतःचेच 'तत्वज्ञान' बनवत जगण्याखेरीज काही मार्ग दिसत नाही., कारण धर्माचे मूळ स्वरूप सदैव वैयक्तिकच राहणार. Institutionalized religion म्हणजे एक fraud आहे, किंवा स्काऊट, रोटरी, लायन चळवळीपेक्षा तिला महत्व नाही. ज्यावेळी धर्मच अपुरा पडू लागला तेव्हा काही जणांना Marxism सारखे secular तत्वज्ञान समाधान देऊ शकले. पण त्याबाबतही मी अगदी असाध्य कोडगा ठरतो. त्याच्याइतके अनाकर्षक, वैराण, हमाली तत्वज्ञान मला कुठे आढळले नाही...मार्क्सवादी माणसाचे चित्र काढायचे झाल्यास ठोकळ्यावर ठोकळे ठेवलेली आकृती काढली की पुरे..."
(पृष्ठ १७९, 'जी एंची निवडक पत्रे', खंड १, १९९५)

त्यांच्या स्वामी ह्या कथेकडे स्टालिनच्या काळातील सोवियत रशियामधील जीवनाचे रूपक कथा (allegory) म्हणून पाहता येईल.

पण आज मला जीएंचे दुसरे अवतरण आठवते.
"...त्याने प्रेमाचा व शांतीचा संदेश सांगितला, पण प्रसार झाला तो तलवारीच्या जोरावर; त्याने निरिच्छ्तेवर भर दिला, तर आता त्याच्या धर्माचा आधार आहे संपत्ती. हा तुला त्याचा विजय वाटतो, तसे पाहिले तर त्याचे सच्चे अनुयायी एखाद्या खेड्यातील वसतीपेक्षा जास्त नसतील. पण म्हणून का त्याच्या शिकवणीचे महत्व कमी होते?..."
('यात्रिक', 'पिंगळावेळ', 1977)

आपल्याला बहुतेकांना माहित आहे की जीएंनी हे येसू आणि ख्रिश्चन धर्माबद्दल म्हटले आहे. मला आज वाटते हे मार्क्स आणि त्याच्या नावाने ज्या कम्युनिझम चा प्रसार झाला त्याला सुद्धा लागू आहे.

लेनिन, स्टालिन, माओ वगैरे क्रूरात्मे किंवा भारतातले अप्पलपोटे, बडबडे, टीव्ही, पुस्तक, फेसबुक आणि वर्तमानपत्रात आढळणारे समाजवादी, म्हणजे कार्ल आणि त्याची शिकवण नव्हे.... "त्याचे सच्चे अनुयायी एखाद्या खेड्यातील वसतीपेक्षा जास्त नसतील".... "पण म्हणून का त्याच्या शिकवणीचे महत्व कमी होते?"

असाच एक कार्लचा सच्चा अनुयायी म्हणजे मला दि के बेडेकर वाटतात. वर दिलेले त्यांचे quotation वाचा....  इतका आशावाद, इतका भाबडेपणा, इतका सज्जनपणा, इतकी सचोटी...आज जगभर कम्युनिझम कोलमडून पडला असला तरी हेलावून टाकते... (btw बा सी मर्ढेकरांच्या कवितांचे सुंदर परिक्षण करणारे दि के बेडेकर जीए म्हणतात - "ठोकळ्यावर ठोकळे ठेवलेली आकृती काढली की पुरे"- तसे अजिबात नव्हते!)

Best known for lyric poetry and praised profusely by Nietzsche for the use of German language but whose writings were abhorred by the Nazis, Heinrich Heine sitting with Jenny and Karl Marx, standing, 1848

courtesy: AKG Images   

इंग्रजी कॉमिक्सची शंभर सोनेरी पाने....Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story

Artist: Art Spiegelman

एप्रिल २०१८ मध्ये हे वेबपेज पहिले आणि पुन्हा एकदा लक्षात आलेकी माध्यम म्हणून इंग्लिश मध्ये कॉमिकस कुठल्याकुठे गेले आहे .... हे एक पेज नीट वाचण्यात कित्येक दिवस जातील....

त्यावरील एक एन्ट्री विशेष उल्लेखनीय वाटली :

Writers: Alfred Hassler and Benton Resnik; Letterer: John Duffy

त्याची ओळख कशी करून दिलीय ते पहा :

 "The Fellowship of Reconciliation was formed in England in early 1914 in a failed attempt to prevent the outbreak of World War I. The following year, they opened up their American branch of the organization and have been serving the public good ever since. In the 1950s, they were directly involved with Martin Luther King Jr. in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56. It was while working with Dr. King that the Fellowship’s director of publications, Alfred Hassler, came up with a brainstorm. He pitched the idea of producing a comic book that could serve to spread the message of the boycott. Essentially, he wanted to create a guidebook for nonviolent protesting.

Hassler worked with Toby Press to produce the comic book. Legendary cartoonist Al Capp lent a few artists from his studio to draw it. Dr. King gave his own feedback on the comic book as well. The published work was a 16-page publication called Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. It opened with a short biography of King’s life, then an “everyman” account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, followed by a detailed guide to how to do a nonviolent protest like the bus boycotts. 375,000 copies were printed — 250,000 in English and 125,000 in Spanish — and they were distributed through African-American schools, churches, and civil-rights groups. The protesters who became known as the Greensboro Four, who helped to desegregate Woolworth’s in North Carolina by having protest sit-ins, specifically cited The Montgomery Story as the direct inspiration for their actions. The success of the comic led to countless other political groups using comic books to express their message to the masses. Recently, in honor of The Montgomery Story, Representative John Lewis used comics to tell his autobiography in the award-winning and best-selling graphic memoir series, March."

स्वतः डॉ॰ मार्टिन लूथर किंग, जूनियर यांनी कॉमिक्स वाचून फीडबॅक दिला....

Capitalism, c2018: I Am Going to Eat You...

# InternationalWorkers'Day
Today May 1 2018 is International Workers' Day

John Gray:

"...What we need, we have been told, is a gentler, kinder and morally prettier sort of capitalism, one that is based on serving the public good rather than selfish acquisitiveness. It’s a high-minded fantasy, which Keynes relegated to a distant future and Marx would have scoffed at..."
"...In its role as a political tract, The Wire is a polemic against the idea that the unrestrained market is the embodiment of individual liberty. Simon has used the series to expose the contradictions of this atavistic ideology: supposedly aiming to enhance choice, the reinvention of the free market has left the majority of people more exposed to random events and arbitrary power than before. Like the dim remnant on the left that insists communism has yet to be tried, neoliberals will say that the free market still does not yet truly exist. Against this fantasy of market freedom, The Wire is saying: Look, this is how capitalism works..."

Johan Norberg:

"Karl Marx thought that capitalism inevitably made the rich richer and the poor poorer. By the time Marx died, however, the average Englishman was three times richer than at the time of his birth 65 years earlier — never before had the population experienced anything like it."

Artist: Paul Noth, The New Yorker, August 2016

When I first saw this brilliant cartoon, I immediately thought of Mr. Donald Trump. The cartoonist also probably meant the same.

But then I thought, the wolf is not him but indeed the naked capitalism that exists today and it tells us- sheep- 'like it is': I am going to eat you....and worse, you can't do a shit about it.

तरली तर चेटकीण, बुडली तर स्त्री-हक्क कार्यकर्ती! ....Make It New

Ezra Pound: "Make It New."

André Gide: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

 courtesy: Wikipedia

(Illustration from an 18th century chapbook reproduced in Chap-books of the eighteenth century by John Ashton (1834))

वरील चित्र इ स १८००च्या आधीचे आहे.इथे एका स्त्रीला शिक्षा दिली जातीय. त्यात जे मशीन आहे त्याला ककींग किंवा डकिंग स्टूल म्हणायचे.

का शिक्षा दिली जातीय? तर जास्त वाद घातल्याबद्दल. "Punishing a woman accused of excessive arguing in the ducking stool."

विकिपीडिया सांगते:

“In medieval times until the early 18th century, ducking was a way used to establish whether a suspect was a witch. The ducking stools were first used for this purpose but ducking was later inflicted without the chair. In this instance the victim's right thumb was bound to her left big toe. A rope was attached to her waist and the "witch" was thrown into a river or deep pond. If the "witch" floated it was deemed that she was in league with the devil, rejecting the "baptismal water". If the "witch" sank she was deemed innocent.”

आता या सगळ्या पार्श्वभूमीवर खालील मार्च २०१८मधले चित्र पहा :

Artist: Peter Kuper, The New Yorker, March 2018

एक चांगला कार्टूनिस्ट एका जुन्या चित्रात नव्याने प्राण कसा भरू शकतो याचे हे उदाहरण आहे. भारतातील अशाच एका प्रयत्नासाठी- स्व. सुधीर तेलंग यांनी केलेल्या-  ही "Sudhir Tailang Is Making Shankar New"

मे २०१२ची पोस्ट पहा.

Tragedy of King Lear.....With Animated Penguins

#ShakespeareBaptized
 
On April 26 1564, William Shakespeare was baptized.

Artist: Robert Mankoff

अनौपचारिकतेची फसवी नक्षी...Saul Steinberg, Vasant Sarwate and The Enigma of Reason

सॉल स्टाईनबर्ग (Saul Steinberg) १९१४-१९९९ यांचा वसंत सरवटेंवर (१९२७-२०१६) खूप प्रभाव होता  आणि त्या प्रभावातून सरवटेंनी कित्येक सुंदर चित्रे निर्माण केली, जी स्टाईनबर्ग यांच्या चित्रांइतकी चांगली आहेत.

 courtesy: the current copyright holder(s) of Mr. Steinberg's work

हे अलीकडेच प्रसिध्द झालेल्या पुस्तकाचे मुखपृष्ठ पहा. हे चित्र स्टाईनबर्ग यांचे आहे हे तर लगेचच कळते.

सरवटे या चित्राबद्दल बोलले आहेत:

"...बॉसचं आपल्या असिस्टंटशी बोलणं. घोगरा, दमदार आवाज, दुसऱ्याला बोलण्याची संधी न देणारा, भाषा औपचारिक, अनौपचारिकतेची फसवी नक्षी, करवतीसारखे दात असलेली धारदार तरी किंवा गाफील राहिल्यास पेचात पकडणारी. एकूण सर्व बोलणं दडपण आणणारं. बॉस-असिस्टंट या 'संवादा'ची सर्व वैशिष्ट्य एक शब्दही न वापरता केवळ रेषांमधून स्टाईनबर्ग आपल्याला अक्षरश 'दाखवतो'!

('चौकटीबाहेरची चित्रं', महाराष्ट्र टाइम्स दिवाळी वार्षिक , १९९५)

वरील मुखपृष्ठवाल्या पुस्तकाचे लेखक लिहतात:

"...Humans also differ from other animals in the wealth and breadth of information they share with one another and in the degree to which they rely on this communication. To become competent adults, we each had to learn a lot from others. Our skills and our general knowledge owe less to individual experience than to social transmission. In most of our daily undertakings, in family life, in work, in love, or in leisure, we rely extensively on what we have learned from others. These huge, indispensable benefits we get from communication go together with a commensurate vulnerability to misinformation. When we listen to others, what we want is honest information. When we speak to others, it is often in our interest to mislead them, not necessarily through straightforward lies but by at least distorting, omitting, or exaggerating information so as to better influence them in their opinions and in their actions...."

('The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding' by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber)

ग्लोरिया ग्रॅहम आणि मीना कुमारी....The Girls Who Couldn't Say No

Annette Bening as Gloria Grahame, 2017:
"...You want to leave me? People have been walking out on me my whole life, honey..."

Meena Kumari:
"Badi Bechari Hai
Meena Kumari
Jisko Lagi Hai
Dil Ki Bimari" (quoted in Vinod Mehta's 'Meena Kumari: The Classic Biography', 1972/2013)

'Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool', २०१७ हा अतिशय चांगला चित्रपट नुकताच पहिला.  ग्लोरिया ग्रॅहम (Gloria Grahame) १९२३-१९८१ यांच्या जीवनावर तो आधारित आहे.

अॅनेट बेनिंग (Annette Bening) यांचा उत्कृष्ट अभिनय हे या सिनेमाचे सर्वात मोठे वैशिष्ट्य म्हणता येईल.

(मोठे करून पहा : त्यात लिहले आहे : The Girl Who Can't Say No)

 सौजन्य : Lionsgate (UK) and Sony Pictures Classics (USA)

तो पाहत असताना स्व. मीना कुमारींची (१९३३-१९७२) आठवण येत राहिली.

दोघीही महान अभिनेत्र्या.... दोघींबद्दल निंफोमॅनियाक हे विशेषण वापरल गेलेल... काही असो, दोघी प्रेमाला भुकेल्या...

सिनेमा बघून हेही वाटल: मीना कुमारींच्या जीवनावर या दर्जाचा सिनेमा हिंदीत कधी निघेल का?

Gaby Wood, LRB, March 2018: 

"...Ray would go on to say of his marriage to Grahame: ‘I didn’t like her very much. I was infatuated with her, but I didn’t like her very much.’ As if in homage to Ray’s dislike, his biographer Patrick McGilligan refers to Grahame several times as a ‘sexy blonde actress’, and writes that ‘many of those who knew Grahame considered her a nymphomaniac.’ It wasn’t just those who knew her. In Peter Turner’s succinct, sad memoir, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (recently made into a film with an uncanny Annette Bening in the lead), Grahame is a washed-up Hollywood star about to die of cancer – but hers is a complicated decrepitude. Hair matted, make-up mouldering, asking to be ‘burped’ like a baby, she is even so billed in British repertory theatres as ‘the girl who can’t say no’..."

Vinod Mehta, ‘Lucknow Boy: A Memoir’, 2011:

“....Was Meena Kumari, as rumoured, a nymphomaniac? The word denotes ‘uncontrolled sexual desire in a woman’. I could come to no definite conclusion on the issue which the publishers were very keen for me to investigate. All I found was that she was widely believed to have slept around. Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Raaj Kumar, Dharmendra, Sawan Kumar and several others allegedly received her favours after she had had a quarter bottle of her favourite brandy.

I was told about one admirer she fornicated with casually who thought he had a good thing going. After a night of satisfactory lovemaking, he knocked the next afternoon on the door of her make-up room, ‘Kaun?’ (who?), asked the lady. The admirer gave his name. She again asked, ‘Kaun?’ The admirer again gave his name, this time providing more details, reminding the actress of their union the previous night. ‘Raat gayi, baat gayi’ (The night has gone, so has the matter), she answered nonchalantly.

I do not know whether it is true today, but in the ’70s there was a battery of hangers-on attached to a star. They could be distant relatives, secretaries, legal counsels, hairdressers, brothers-in-law, chauffeurs, etc. These people’s fantasies of making it big courtesy the star were at once sad and gripping. The fantasists were, happily, a valuable source of classified information, which helped me reconstruct Meena Kumari’s life. To be sure, they would crazily exaggerate their importance, influence and proximity to the star. One hanger-on invited me to inspect a secret bedchamber, with lots of mirrors, tucked away in his office. This is where he claimed he serviced the actress...”