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."

Monday, March 26, 2018

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.


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