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 31, 2014

What Will Change in 2015?





Charles Lamb on December 31 1821:


“...The last day of 1821. I don’t know how it is, but I grow less reflective as I get older. I seem to take things as they come without much care. In early life, everything being new excites thought. As nothing is new when a man is 35, one thinks less...”
John Gray:

"...Bio-engineering and artificial intelligence are certain to be developed and used for military purposes, and any post-humans that emerge will probably be locked in combat with one another. Chronically divided, the new species will no more be masters of the earth or themselves than we are today..."


One of my favorite cartoonists Zachary Kanin drew this in 2012

 
This year he drew this in August 2014 for The New Yorker




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Saturday, December 27, 2014

पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की...Poetry of Flowers is often Patchy and Ill-informed




Writing of his experiences in World War I, Edmund Blunden in ‘Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau’:

“…Bold great daisies' golden lights,

Bubbling roses' pinks and whites—

Such a gay carpet! poppies by the million;

Such damask! such vermilion!

But if you ask me, mate, the choice of colour

Is scarcely right; this red should have been duller.”

On September 18 2007, I wrote on "self-absorption" of writers. Read it here.

As mentioned there, apparently, writers from Kalidasa to Dnyaneshwar (ज्ञानेश्वर) and beyond never mention a butterfly/ moth  in their writings!

I claim this based on a book 'Nisrgotsav' by the late Durga Bhagwat. (“पिवळीच मी पाकोळी की”/ निसर्गोत्सव, 1996 लेखक: दुर्गा भागवत)

Now, I have learnt a little more on the subject.

In the issue dated September 25 2014 of the The New York Review of Books, Robin Lane Fox says:

"...Surprisingly, the poetry of flowers is often patchy and ill-informed. None of the ancient Greek poets mentions the brilliant wild tulips that run like red rivers through parts of the Greek landscape. Chinese poets focus on a narrow canon of flowers, soaked in symbolism and hidden meanings. They say nothing about the heavenly wild flora, the superb shrubs and mountain flowers that have transformed Western gardens since their collection and introduction by Europeans. John Milton’s poetry describes bunches of flowers that would never flower during one and the same season. No gardener, especially in Britain this year, would agree that April is “the cruellest month” and in no gardens or landscapes known to me does April breed “lilacs out of the dead land,” least of all on the American East Coast within range of the young T.S. Eliot..."

Very big names, very big civilizations were mentioned there...

Chinese poets focus on a narrow canon of flowers, soaked in symbolism and hidden meanings. They say nothing about the heavenly wild flora, the superb shrubs and mountain flower...

And so is true of  Indians.

For Indian writers, lotus and rose- followed by Parijat (Night-flowering Jasmine), Champak (Magnolia champaca), Gulmohar (Delonix regia), Bakul (Mimusops elengi) etc- are  'soaked in symbolism and hidden meanings'. Not much place for 'wild flora, the superb shrubs and mountain flower'.

Chinese Chrysanthemum cultivar

Courtesy: 'The Golden Age of Botanical Art' by Martyn Rix
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