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."

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Dilip Chitre, We'll always have Tukaram

Ashok Shahane: "Dilip Purushottam Chitre had to incarnate to tell even the poets here that Tukaram was a poet to the bone." [Napeksha, 2005]

(अशोक शहाणे: "तुकाराम हाडाचा कवी होता हे इथल्या कवींनाच सांगण्यासाठीसुद्धा दिलीप पुरुषोत्तम चित्रे अवतरावे लागले." (नपेक्षा))

It's hard to believe this but it is true. It's similar to explaining 20th century playwrights that Shakespeare was a playwright to the bone!

Chitre chooses this poem of Tukaram for the last section "Farewell to Being" (असण्याचा निरोप) in his book "Punha Tukaram" (पुन्हा तुकाराम).

सकळ ही माझी बोळवण करा ।
परतोनि घरा जावें तुह्मीं ॥1॥

कर्मधर्में तुह्मां असावें कल्याण ।
घ्या माझें वचन आशीर्वाद ॥ध्रु।॥

वाढवूनि दिलों एकाचिये हातीं ।
सकळ निश्चिंती जाली तेथें ॥2॥

आतां मज जाणें प्राणेश्वरासवें ।
माझिया भावें अनुसरलों ॥3॥

वाढवितां लोभ होइऩल उसीर ।
अवघींच स्थिर करा ठायीं ॥4॥

धर्म अर्थ काम जाला एके ठायीं ।
मेळविला जिंहीं हाता हात ॥5॥

तुका ह्मणे आतां जाली हे चि भेटी ।
उरल्या त्या गोष्टी बोलावया ॥6॥

I wonder if anyone else in the world has ever said such moving farewell words. Nice try Humphrey Bogart though.

(They remind me of my last meeting with my mother. I could never say it but 'Aai, We'll always have Miraj'.)

Following picture of great Saul Steinberg has appeared on this blog before. There I imagined that it depicted how Namdev (नामदेव) created the myth of Lord Vitthal.

Here I see: D P Chitre painting the image of his great forebear Tukaram, complete with a horn in his mouth, for anyone who could read either Marathi, English or German, and Tukaram in turn places a wreath on Chitre's head for a job well done!


Artist: Saul Steinberg, The New Yorker, Jan 6 1962
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