क्रुसहि अधिरा बनला आहे/ खिळा खिळ्याला भिडला आहे ... वरात अजुनी फोनवर आहे... Good Friday

Today March 30 2018 is Good Friday     

ख्रिस्ताच्या बलिदानावरच्या  जगातील उत्कृष्ट कवितांपैकी ही रेग्यांची कविता असेल. विस्टन ह्यू ऑडन ह्यांच्या सर्वोत्तम कवितांतील एक वाटावी इतकी ती सुंदर आहे. 

 

'Mammon' by Alex Gross

(Mammon= wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion)

लुक्रीशस, जीए आणि अणुंचे एकमेकावर आपोआप आदळणे.....Lucretius, GA and How the World Became Modern

१४ मार्च १९८७ ला जी. ए. श्री पु भागवतांना लिहतात:

(पृष्ठ २४८, 'जी. एं.ची निवडक पत्रे', खंड २, १९८८)

कृतज्ञता : जीएंच्या साहित्याचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स

मला सर्वप्रथम एका गोष्टीचे विशेष वाटले आणि ते म्हणजे जी. एं. ना वाटत असलेले Rationalism बद्दलचे आकर्षण. जोसेफ कॉनरॅडच्या फॅनला, ग्रीक साहित्याच्या अभ्यासकाला हे आकर्षण इतके का वाटत असावे?

त्यातील एक वाक्य पहा: "...स्वच्छ, जळजळीत दृष्टीने Lucretiusने केलेला देव, देवता, भाबड्या कल्पना यांचा विध्वंस मला आवडला होता...". हे वाक्य सुद्धा जी. एं. नी धर्म, देव इत्यादी गोष्टींसंदर्भात आधी केलेल्या nuanced अनेक विधानांच्या तुलनेत टोकाचे वाटते. 

लुक्रीशस (१५ ऑक्टोबर इ. स पू ९९- इ. स पू ५५) यांचे 'ऑन दी नेचर ऑफ थिंग्ज' हे पुस्तक जी. एं.ना  किती आवडत होत ते वर दिलेला पत्राचा भाग वाचून समजत. त्यांना त्याचा अनुवाद करायचा होता.  तो ते बहुदा करू शकले नाहीत कारण जीए स्वतःच १९८७ डिसेंबर, वरील पत्रानंतर ९-१० महिन्यात वारले.

जी ए त्या अनुवादाच्या प्रोजेक्ट मधील अडचणी पण सांगतायत : आपल्याकडे goddess of love नाही, अणु एकमेकावर आपोआप आदळतात वगैरे त्यांना rationalism मध्ये बसत नाही  अस वाटायला लागल....

सप्टेंबर २०११ मध्ये स्टीफन ग्रीनब्लॅट यांचे पुलित्झर आणि अमेरिकेचा नॅशनल बुक अवॉर्ड मिळवणारे पुस्तक  प्रसिद्ध झाले. त्याचे नाव: "दी स्वर्व : हाऊ दी वर्ल्ड बिकेम मॉडर्न'. त्या पुस्तकाचा दावा: लुक्रीशसच्या 'ऑन दी नेचर ऑफ थिंग्ज' पुस्तकामुळे जग आधुनिक झाले.

ग्रीनब्लॅट पुस्तकाबद्दल काय सांगतायत पहा:

"...The stuff of the universe, Lucretius proposed, is an infinite number of atoms moving randomly through space, like dust motes in a sunbeam, colliding, hooking together, forming complex structures, breaking apart again, in a ceaseless process of creation and destruction. There is no escape from this process. When you look up at the night sky and, feeling unaccountably moved, marvel at the numberless stars, you are not seeing the handiwork of the gods or a crystalline sphere detached from our transient world. You are seeing the same material world of which you are a part and from whose elements you are made. There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design. All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms it involves a principle of natural selection. That is, species that are suited to survive and to reproduce successfully endure, at least for a time; those that are not so well suited die off quickly. But nothing—from our own species to the planet on which we live to the sun that lights our days—lasts forever. Only the atoms are immortal.

In a universe so constituted, Lucretius argued, there is no reason to think that the earth or its inhabitants occupy a central place, no reason to set humans apart from all other animals, no hope of bribing or appeasing the gods, no place for religious fanaticism, no call for ascetic self-denial, no justification for dreams of limitless power or perfect security, no rationale for wars of conquest or self-aggrandizement, no possibility of triumphing over nature, no escape from the constant making and unmaking and remaking of forms. On the other side of anger at those who either peddled false visions of security or incited irrational fears of death, Lucretius offered a feeling of liberation and the power to stare down what had once seemed so menacing. What human beings can and should do, he wrote, is to conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasure of the world.

I marveled—I continue to marvel—that these perceptions were fully articulated in a work written more than two thousand years ago. The line between this work and modernity is not direct: nothing is ever so simple. There were innumerable forgettings, disappearances, recoveries, dismissals, distortions, challenges, transformations, and renewed forgettings. And yet the vital connection is there. Hidden behind the worldview I recognize as my own is an ancient poem, a poem once lost, apparently irrevocably, and then found..."

ग्रीनब्लॅट यांचे समीक्षण जी एं.च्या समीक्षणा पेक्षा मला जास्त आवडले.

जी ए ज्याला 'आपोआप' म्हणतायत ते म्हणजे : There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design. All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms it involves a principle of natural selection.

...इथे डायनोसार नुस्ता जिवंतच नाही तर तारुण्याने मुसमुसलेला आहे. ...The Comet Isn’t Coming, It Has Arrived

Wendy Doniger, LRB, February 1999:

“...A more compelling metaphor, it seems to me, is offered by the capitalist implications of ‘a Stegosaurus made of money’, a dino at the Smithsonian that was rumoured to be ‘made from worn money withdrawn from circulation’. This image of extinct money also has the advantage of placing the dino saur where it belongs, as not the symbol but the product of capitalism; as Mitchell himself notes, it is ‘a cross between an idol and a cash cow’....”

Kevin McGuire in a Facebook comment: ".... "Spank me!" she screams,but the T-Rex couldn't reach with his little arms so he ate her entire body in one bite...."
 

लंडन रीव्हयू ऑफ बुक्स (LRB) मध्ये फेब्रुवारी २२ २०१८च्या अंकात फ्रांसीस गुडींग (Francis Gooding) यांनी
'Palaeoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past' by Zoë Lescaze या पुस्तकाचे परिक्षण लिहले आहे.  

१९७०च्या दशकांपासून मी डायनोनवर प्रेम केलय आणि त्यांना 'follow ' केलय. माझ्या आयुष्यातच डायनो कसे दिसायचे यावर प्रचंड उलथापालथ झाली आहे. रंगीत का पाली सारखे? पिसे का बिनपिसे? वगैरे..... 

"What colour was a Tyrannosaurus rex? How did an Archaeopteryx court a mate? And how do you paint the visual likeness of something no human eye will ever see? Far from bedevilling the artists who wanted to depict prehistoric creatures and their lost worlds, Zoë Lescaze’s book shows that such conundrums have in fact been invitations to glorious freedom. For nearly two hundred years the resulting genre – now known as palaeoart – has been a playground wherein tyrannosaurids, plesiosaurs and their fellows have not only illustrated scientific knowledge, but acted as scaled and feathered proxies for the anxieties of contemporary life. Lescaze argues that they should be seen as ‘roads to understanding our relationship to the past and our place within the present’. Despite these garish images of dinosaur combat and primeval cataclysm having held at best the status of kitsch, it is impossible to deny the extraordinary success of the genre. None of us has ever seen one, but who doesn’t know what a dinosaur looks like?"

भारतात या दोनशे वर्षात पेलिओ आर्ट (palaeoart) निर्माण झाल्याचे  दिसत नाही. १९व्या शतकातील मराठी लेखनात डायनो चे उल्लेख तरी आहेत का? मी तरी वाचले नाहीयेत. सर्वसामान्य भारतीय माणसाला डायनोसार परिचित केंव्हा झाले याची मला माहिती नाही. शालेय अभ्यास क्रमात ते केंव्हा आले हे ही माहित नाही. 

६.५ कोटी वर्षांपूर्वी पृथ्वीवर आदळलेल्या लघुग्रहामुळे (asteroid) डायनासोर यांचा नाश झाला असे म्हणतात. आपल्या काळात असा सर्वनाशी लघुग्रह पुन्हा येणार का? त्याचे उत्तर परीक्षणात दिले आहे. 

".... Lescaze doesn’t bring us all the way to modern palaeoart. Instead, she ends with the 1970s work of Ely Kish, whose painting is unusual in its focus on extinction. Featuring decayed corpses, dried-out skeletons, and parched creatures dying in the desert, and drawing on an increasing anxiety about environmental damage, Kish’s work showed the great dying of the dinosaurs. It’s a pertinent note to end on, and it’s the one thing that’s beyond debate: however they were feathered, furred or coloured, and whether they were sluggish or nimble, dim-witted or highly intelligent, all these dinosaurs are utterly dead, for ever. Prey or predator, they are all extinct. Adorno suggests that the dream of a living dinosaur signals the hope, born in guilt, that other living things might survive the disaster humankind is inflicting on the natural world, even if we don’t. If the cosmic memento mori provided to us by these strange paintings of resurrected ancient creatures was once oblique, it is not any more. We are already well into the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history, and it is being caused by us. The comet isn’t coming, it has arrived."

सर्वनाशी  धूमकेतू पोचला आहे-  ६वे मास एक्सटिन्क्शन जोरात चालू आहे आणि ते आपणच करतोय! ते सुरु असतानाच वर उल्लेखलेली 'the dream of a living dinosaur' नावाची आशा, इच्छा अद्भुतात (fantasy) बदलते आणि Dinosaur Beast Erotica होते.   इथे डायनो नुस्ता जिवंतच नाही तर तारुण्याने मुसमुसलेला आहे. म्हणजे ही इरोटिका सुद्धा पेलिओआर्टचाच भाग आहे. 

courtesy: copyright holders