A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush

Artist: Liana Finck ,   The New Yorker, October 2019

मराठी साहित्यात समुद्राच वास्तव किती सातत्याने दुर्लक्षित केलं आहे... the Dislike of the Sea is a part of the Italian Character

विलास सारंग:
"… मराठी साहित्यात समुद्राच वास्तव किती सातत्याने दुर्लक्षित केलं आहे, हे माझ्या विवेचनाच सार होतं… आपण वास्तवाच्या -वाङमयीन सामग्रीच्या- केवढ्या मोठ्या भांडाराला मुकतो आहोत, हे माझ्या लेखात निर्देशित केलं आहे...मराठी वाङमयातील समुद्राची अनुपस्थिती मराठी समाजाच्या संरचनेशी कशी निगडीत आहे, हे माझ्या लेखात स्पष्ट केलेलं आहे."

("वाङमयीन संस्कृती व सामाजिक वास्तव", 2011, पृष्ठ 66-67)

[Vilas Sarang: "....How consistently Marathi literature has ignored the reality of sea: that was the summary of my  interpretation...the huge extent of reality - literary content- we have lost has been pointed in my article. The absence of sea in Marathi literature is linked to the structure of Marathi society has been clarified in my article." ("Vangmayin Sanskruti va samajik vastav")]

जॉन विल्यम्स यांची 'ऑगस्टस' १९७२ ही एक महान कादंबरी आहे. कै सारंगांनी ती वाचली होती का याचे उत्तर माझ्याकडे नाही. 

पण त्यातील एक भाग खाली पहा:

"...It occurs to me, as we drift slowly southward, that without my having to tell them to do so, the crew, since they are under no compulsion to make haste, have instinctively kept always in sight of land, though as the wind has changed we have had to go to some trouble to make corrections to follow the irregular line of the coast. There is something deep within the Italian heart that does not like the sea, a dislike that has seemed to some so intense as to be nearly abnormal. It is more than fear, and it is more than the natural propensity of the peasant to husband his land, and to avoid that which is so unlike it. Thus the eagerness of your friend Strabo to sail blithely upon unknown seas, in search of strangeness, would bewilder the ordinary Roman, who ventures beyond the sight of land only upon the occasion of such a necessity as war. And yet under Marcus Agrippa the Roman navy has become the most powerful in the history of the world, and the battles that saved Rome from its enemies were fought upon the sea. Nevertheless, the dislike remains. It is a part of the Italian character.

It is a dislike of which the poets have been aware. You know that little poem of Horace's addressed to the ship that was bearing his friend Vergil to Athens? He advanced the conceit that the gods had separated land from land by the unimaginable depths of ocean so that the peoples in those lands might be distinct, and man in his foolhardiness launches his frail bark upon an element that ought not to be touched. And Vergil himself, in his great poem upon the founding of Rome, never speaks of the sea except in the most ominous of terms: Aeolus sends his thunder and winds upon the deep, waves are lifted so high that they obscure the stars, timbers are broken, and men see nothing..." (Book III)

Mick Stevens's The Catt!

 William Blake, The Tyger, 1794

"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

..."

 Artist; Mick Stevens

जी.एंच्या व्यक्तिमत्वातील विरोधाभास!...Nietzsche, Orwell, GA and Contradictions

"जी.एं. ची निवडक पत्रे: खंड ३", २००६-२०१२ वाचायला सुरवात करायच्या आधी विजय पाडळकरांची प्रस्तावना चाळली आणि खूप गंमत काही वेळा वाटली - त्यांना जी.एंच्या व्यक्तिमत्वातील विरोधाभासांचे आश्चर्य वाटतय (उदा: वाचा एकतीस)!

 

विरोधाभासाशिवाय मनुष्य जिवंत आहे असे म्हणताच येणार नाही.

 

Gerald Frost on George Orwell:

"The contradictions have frequently been noted: he was a socialist intellectual whose finest achievements included a mordant critique of the hypocrisy and double standards displayed by the socialist intellectuals of his day; a patriot who held most of his country’s institutions in contempt; a passionate defender of historical truth who chose to write under an assumed name and who occasionally told lies; a self-styled champion of decency who backed causes that, had they prevailed, would have produced outcomes in which decency would have been difficult to discern; an atheist who decreed that his funeral should be conducted by the Church of England and that he should be buried in a rural parish churchyard. It is often the contradictions in an individual’s character that give it distinction; in the case of Orwell, these were more marked and more numerous than in most, but it is not clear whether he was even aware of them."

 

John Gray on Friedrich Nietzsche :

"... If his writings abound in contradictions, it is not because he was unaware of them, but rather that, believing truth in many areas of philosophical inquiry to be inherently paradoxical, he had no interest in system-building. ..."

 

फक्त दोन उदाहरणे पुरेत!

 

 

 Artist: Barney Tobey, The New Yorker. March 1984

...Whether an Epitaph, Chorus or Strange Augury

 "Over these unremembered marble columns,

birds glide their old remembered way.

Dive in red gold setting tide and write dark alphabets on evening sky

whether an epitaph, chorus or strange augury

little man you only hope to know!"

This poem, most likely, is by G. A. Kulkarni. 

Frank Godwin illustration from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, 1921

रस्त्याच्या बाजूला उभे राहून लघुशंका करण्याची मजा काही वेगळीच...Pleasure of Pissing By The Roadside

रस्त्याच्या बाजूला उभे राहून लघुशंका करण्याची मजा काही वेगळीच

Artist: Stephen Firmin

 Chocolate cookie la touraine, c. 1901

The Leaf- Rene Magritte and Eugène Mihaesco

 

"The Fire", 1943 by Rene Magritte

The New Yorker, 1972 Artist: Eugène Mihaesco

Drink, Life Insurance, Vacation, Home in the Country...Farewell, My Lovely

"...I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room..."

(Raymond Chandler, 'Farewell, My Lovely', 1940) 

Swan and Sex

 Damayanti (Wikipedia):

"Damayanti was the Yadava princess of Vidarbha Kingdom. One day, a beautiful swan came to her and told her about Nala, king of Nishada. The swan was sent by Nala after hearing about her from it. After hearing about Nala, she was impressed with him and wanted to marry him. A swayamvara was organized by Damayanti's father and Nala was also invited. Damayanti chose Nala out of the kings and princes and married. After a few years, they had two children...."

(Maybe swan wanted to marry her too!)

 

Artist: Raja Ravi Varma 

Artist: Zachary Kanin