वि स खांडेकर, ऑस्कर वाइल्ड , ला सालोमी आणि दुर्गा भागवत...Yayati of Khandekar Is Inspired By Oscar Wilde’s play Salome

SALOMÉ: “…All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Iokanaan? With the cloak of thine hands, and with the cloak of thy blasphemies thou didst hide thy face. Thou didst put upon thine eyes the covering of him who would see his God. Well, thou hast seen thy God, Iokanaan, but me, me, thou didst never see. If thou hadst seen me thou hadst loved me. I saw thee, and I loved thee. Oh, how I loved thee! I love thee yet, Iokanaan. I love only thee . . . . I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body; and neither wine nor apples can appease my desire. What shall I do now, Iokanaan? Neither the floods nor the great waters can quench my passion. I was a princess, and thou didst scorn me. I was a virgin, and thou didst take my virginity from me. I was chaste, and thou didst fill my veins with fire . . . . Ah! ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me? If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me. Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death….”  (Oscar Wilde, 'Salome', 1891)

 कलाकार : कै दीनानाथ दलाल  (https://www.facebook.com/artistdinanathdalal)

वि स खांडेकर यांची  ज्ञानपीठ पुरस्कृत (१९७४) कादंबरी 'ययाति', १९५९ ही कादंबरी दुर्गाबाई भागवतांना आवडली नाही (मला सुद्धा ती कधीच जरासुद्धा १९७०-८० च्या दशकांत आवडली नाही.)... त्यांच्या परिक्षणाचा थोडा भाग सोबत पहा:

  ( पृष्ठ १७४, 'भावसंचित', २०१५, मूळ लेख 'अबकडइ', १९८४)

(अनेक गाजलेल्या मराठी कलाकृतींना पाश्चिमात्य देशांतील कलाकृतींमुळे प्रेरणा मिळाली आहे - उदा:राम गणेश गडकरी यांचे 'एकच प्याला' हे 'ऑथेल्लो' वरून सुचले असे प्रल्हाद केशव अत्रे त्यांच्या 'संपूर्ण गडकरी'च्या प्रदीर्घ प्रस्तावनेत पृष्ठ ४८ वर लिहतात, वि वा शिरवाडकरांचे 'नटसम्राट' 'किंग लिअर' च्या बळकट पायावर उभे आहे. वसंत कानेटकरांचे 'बेइमान' हे Jean Anouilh ह्यांच्या बेकेट, १९५९ वर आधारित आहे. 

दुर्गाबाई म्हणतात: "...व्हिक्टर ह्युगोचंच एक नाटक आहे 'लुई दि फोर्टिन्थ' म्हणून. या नाटकातील फ्रान्सचा हा राजा अत्यंत बदफ़ैली. तेव्हाच्या पद्धतीनुसार त्याच्या दरबारात एक विदुषक होता. त्याला एक मुलगी होती. अतिशय सुन्दऱ्र. ती लुई राजाच्या नजरेस पडू नये म्हणून तो सतत खबरदारी घ्यायचा. पण एकदा लुई तिला बघतो आणि तिच्यावर बलात्कार करतो. हे कथानक तेंडुलकरांच्या 'घाशीराम कोतवाल' या नाटकाच मूळ. १४ वा  लुई आणि त्याच्या विदुषकाऐवजी नाना फडणीस आणि घाशीराम वर त्यांनी नाटक रचलं...", पृष्ठ १३६, ऐसपैस गप्पा: दुर्गाबाईंशी, १९९८. अर्थात ह्युगो यांनी 'लुई दि फोर्टिन्थ' हे नाटक लिहले नसून Le roi s'amuse, १८३२ नावाचे नाटक लिहले आहे. दुर्गाबाईंना  ते नाटक म्हणायचे असणार. त्यात लुई  नसून फ्रान्सिस आहे...)

वाईल्डच्या 'ला सालोमी' साठी Aubrey Beardsley (August 21, 1872–March 16, 1898) यांनी अति  उत्कृष्ट चित्रे काढली आहेत. 

Maria Popova: “…And yet Beardsley’s images are very much a sacrificial offering to tension, to the contradictory forces by which the human heart is pulled asunder — loneliness and longing, dread and desire, sadness and sensual delight. His stark black-and-white aesthetic — like his life, like all life — is one of violent and vitalizing contrasts, nowhere more so than in his drawings for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome…”

 "... In February of 1893, a British magazine commissioned Beardsley to create a single drawing based on the original French publication of Salomé. But the gorgeously grotesque piece he submitted — Salomé reveling in the severed head of John the Baptist — was too daring and the magazine rejected it. In April, a new art publication included the drawing in its inaugural issue and it made its way to Wilde, who was so taken with it that he offered Beardsley a contract for ten full-page illustrations and a cover design for the English edition. Beardsley was twenty-one and Wilde, whom he had met three years earlier at an artist’s studio, thirty-eight.."

He is Quite Alone. Quite Alone...Satyajit Ray@100

#SatyajitRay100

 

Today May 2 2021 is 100th birth anniversary of Satyajit Ray

 

Satyajit Ray: “… The one thing I am very much interested in is a loner – one person. Quite often in my stories you will see just one person ; he hasn't married, he doesn't have any children, he lives with his own preoccupations … I have personally realised what loneliness is during most of my life. … And often I feel, if I were asked ‘Who is your friend?' I would not be able to name anyone … I am quite alone. Quite alone and I have become used to it. At no time have I regretted the fact that I am alone, or that I lack friends.…”

 

 “A vast sub-continent with one of the oldest and richest traditions of art, music and literature, existed only to be ignored. That this apathy should apply as much to Britain, which once ruled India, as to any other western country is astonishing, but true. The fact is, the Colonised have, willy-nilly, developed considerable interest in the Colonisers, never the other way round. …Slighted for so long, India will not yield up her secretes to the west so easily…”

 

 

  Artist: Satyajit Ray

 

प्लेग, शेक्सपिअर, आणि वर्तमान ....What's "like the tokened pestilence"?

 James Shapiro हे त्यांच्या गाजलेल्या 'The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606' ह्या पुस्तकात प्लेगचा कसा परिणाम १७व्या शतकाच्या सुरवातीला इंग्लंडमधील समाजावर आणि नाटकांवर झाला याची १४व्या, 'प्लेग' नावाच्या,  प्रकरणात चर्चा करतात. 

हे पुस्तक लिहले गेले २०१५ साली आणि मी वाचतोय २०२१ साली त्यामुळे ते प्रकरण वर्तमानातील घटनांमुळे मला खूप अस्वस्थ करते. 

त्यातील काही गोष्टी उद्धृत करतो:

In late July 1606, in the midst of a thrilling theatrical season that included what may well be the finest group of new plays ever staged, the King’s Men lowered their flag at the Globe and locked their playhouse doors. Plague had returned to London.

In any case, by late July 1606, with the number of plague deaths well over that figure and rising week by week, public playing was finished, for the summer at least. 

To reduce the size of crowds, funeral attendance was limited to six, including the pallbearers and minister, though these and other rules were often ignored. 

The councilors had complained that too many Londoners were washing off the red crosses painted over the doors of infected households; the Lord Mayor promised that steps would be taken to use oil-based rather than water-based paint to prevent that. 

The theater, which provides such insight into almost every other aspect of daily life, disappoints when it comes to plague. Dramatists of the day delved into almost every troubling or taboo subject; playgoers saw rape victims stagger onstage and flinched as throats were slit and eyes gouged out. But one thing they never saw depicted were plague victims or their symptoms. Even a passing mention of plague is rare. Was this because it was bad for business to remind playgoers packed into the theaters of the risks of transmitting disease or because a traumatized culture simply couldn’t deal with it? Glancing allusions to plague’s devastation in Shakespeare’s works, when they do appear, are that much more striking. The most haunting is surely the dense one in Macbeth that alludes to the ringing of church bells for the dead and dying, so incessant that people no longer ask for whom the bells toll. 

आता शेवटचा आणखी एक परिच्छेद पहा:

Four centuries later, we have lost much of the shock audiences must have felt when hearing a furious Lear call his eldest daughter, Goneril, a “plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my / Corrupted blood” (7.381–82) or when in Antony and Cleopatra, a soldier, asked which side is winning, replies that the situation is hopeless, “like the tokened pestilence, / Where death is sure” (3.10.9–10). For playgoers in 1606, all too familiar with plague sores and God’s tokens, these terrifying images were more than metaphoric and more terrifying than they can ever be for us.

आज २०२१ मध्ये मात्र हे म्हणता येणार नाही. ६ वर्षांत इंग्लंडमधील आणि इतरत्र जग प्रचंड बदलेले आहे. कोविडच्या रुपाने आपल्याला आजवरच्या सर्व साथींच्या रोगाचा एक प्रमुख बघायला मिळाला आहे. त्यामुळे शेक्सपिअर च्या नाटकातील प्लेग आजच्या मानव जातीला जास्त खोलवर जाणवेल ... 

“Lord Have Mercy on Us,” from Thomas Dekker, A Rod for Runawayes (1625)

तळटीप :

वि. वा. शिरवाडकर, 'नटसम्राट', अंक पहिला, १९७१-२०११:

"... जर तुम्हीच ओतलं असेल कृतघ्नतेचें जहर 

जर या कारट्यांच्या काळजामध्ये ..." ... अशा संवादामध्ये “plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my / Corrupted blood” (7.381–82) ह्याची मजा अजिबात नाही!