मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The Annus Mirabilis of Marathi: Year 1608

On April 14, 2008, we will observe 400th birth anniversary of Saint Samarth Ramdas समर्थ रामदास (1608-1681).

Marathi could be the only major language where two- Ramdas and Tukaram तुकाराम- of its five greatest writers were borne in the same year: 1608.

We have already observed 400th birth anniversary of Tukaram here.

Ramdas has been widely credited to have instilled values of freedom in Marathi speaking people.

In recent years however Hindu fundamentalists have tried to claim his legacy saying that he justified war and violence, particularly against Muslims.

According to T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर (1895 - 1963) this is very unfair to Ramdas.

Shejwalkar quotes from Ramdas’s book Dasbodh दासबोध where he clearly condemns violence and war:



("निवडक लेखसंग्रह" त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर; "Selected Articles-collection" by Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar 1977)

Ramdas’s fight (and also Shivaji’s) was for freedom. It so happened that most tyrant rulers of his day were Muslims. If they were Christians (British or Portuguese or Americans), he would have fought them with the same vigour.

If V K Rajwade वि का राजवाडे is to be believed Ramdas is a greater philosopher than Hegel (1770 – 1831) but for me he is a writer first.

They say Ramdas is the greatest Indian influence on poet B S Mardhekar बा सी मर्ढेकर (1909-1956).

Every time I read Ramdas, I am stunned by beauty, simplicity and brevity of his language. (Read D G Godse’s Shakti Saushthava द ग गोडसे शक्ती सौष्ठव Popular Prakashan 1972 which tries to explain some of the ‘magic’ of 17th century Maharashtra).

Sadly there has been no one who has wielded a Marathi pen the same way since Ramdas’s death.

By the way- this calendar there is not a word on either Tukaram or Ramdas in any American or British newspaper I follow.
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