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, December 14, 2020

Espionage is an Extreme Version of the Human Comedy, even the Human Tragedy...John le Carré

#JohnleCarré 

"ए परफेक्ट स्पाय" ह्या जॉन ल कॅरे ह्यांच्या कदाचित सर्वोत्कृष्ष्ट पुस्तकाचा एपिग्राम पहा:

"A man who has two women loses his soul.

But a man who has two houses loses his head." (Proverb)

 दोन घरे असणाऱ्या सर्वांनी लक्षात ठेवण्यासारखा आहे!

माझ्याकडे त्यांची अनेक पुस्तके आहेत पण त्यातील फक्त एकच मी पूर्ण वाचले आहे. 

मी मुंबईला १९८३ साली नोकरीसाठी गेल्यावर स्ट्रँड बुक स्टोर मधून अत्यंत देखणे 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold', १९६३ हे हार्डबाऊंड पुस्तक विकत आणले होते आणि काही दिवसात अडखळत पण रोमांचित होत संपवले होते. 
 
त्यावरचा रिचर्ड बर्टन यांचा सिनेमा चांगला आहे पण पुस्तक अप्रतिम आहे. जी. ए. कुलकर्णींनी हेरकथा लिहावी तसा तो अनुभव माझ्यासाठी त्यावेळी होत. त्यातील एक उतारा:
 
"...The watch tower’s searchlight began feeling its way along the wall towards them, hesitant; each time it rested they could see the separate bricks and the careless lines of mortar hastily put on. As they watched the beam stopped immediately in front of them. Leamas looked at his watch.

 “Ready?” he asked.

 She nodded.

 Taking her arm he began walking deliberately across the strip. Liz wanted to run, but he held her so tightly that she could not. They were half-way towards the wall now, the brilliant semi-circle of light drawing them forward, the beam directly above them. Leamas was determined to keep Liz very close to him, as if he were afraid that Mundt would not keep his word and somehow snatch her away at the last moment.

 They were almost at the wall when the beam darted to the north, leaving them momentarily in total darkness. Still holding Liz’s arm, Leamas guided her forward blindly, his left hand reaching ahead of him until suddenly he felt the coarse, sharp contact of the cinder brick. Now he could discern the wall and, looking upwards, the triple-strand of wire and the cruel hooks which held it. Metal wedges, like climbers’ pitons, had been driven into the brick. Seizing the highest one, Leamas pulled himself quickly upwards until he had reached the top of the wall. He tugged sharply at the lower strand of wire and it came towards him, already cut.

 “Come on,” he whispered urgently, “start climbing.”

 Laying himself flat he reached down, grasped her upstretched hand and began drawing her slowly upwards as her foot found the first metal rung.

 Suddenly the whole world seemed to break into flame; from everywhere, from above and beside them, massive lights converged, bursting upon them with savage accuracy...."  (John le Carré's 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold', 1963)

 “Now he could discern the Wall and, looking upwards, the triple strand of wire and the cruel hooks which held it.”

Artist: Matt Taylor

CrimeReads.com:
"...but the power of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is its ability to endlessly fascinate and inspire new generations of readers and spy fiction connoisseurs.

This year, The Folio Society has released a new edition of le Carré’s classic, introduced by the author and illustrated by the artist Matt Taylor. The artwork in this new volume evokes a noir world slowly spilt over with grayish blues and flashes of startling color. Espionage-crazed readers that we are, we wanted to share some of these illustrations with you. Here, then, is an artist’s vision of le Carré’s bleak midcentury world, a new rendering of a classic story..."
 
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