I Wish Sadanand Rege Watched 'The Last Station'

Leo Tolstoy:

“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”

Anton Chekhov:

“I admire him (Tolstoy) greatly. What I admire the most in him is that he despises us all; all writers. Perhaps a more accurate description is that he treats us, other writers, as completely empty space. You could argue that from time to time, he praises Maupassant, or Kuprin, or Semenov, or myself. But why does he praise us? It is simple: it’s because he looks at us as if we were children. Our short stories, or even our novels, all are child’s play in comparison with his works. However, Shakespeare… For him, the reason is different. Shakespeare irritates him because he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does.”

Carne Ross:

"…Tolstoy believed, and this is evident in War and Peace, that it's not great men or governments who make history but the actions of ordinary people. One begins to understand that Tolstoy was in fact an anarchist, that this is what Tolstoy believed in. He believed in the theory of ordinary people making history."

On the evening of January 11 2013, I watched Michael Hoffman's 'The Last Station', 2009 a biopic on Leo Tolstoy's life.

So many emotions rushed through my mind as I watched it.

Funny-very funny, sexual arousal, sadness-great amount of sadness, how ordinary in the end everyday life of everyone is, how we are likely to die under an alien sky, how fond as a society we are of making gods of human flesh and blood, our excruciatingly tiresome hero-worshiping (and life threatening consequences if you don't do that!)....and finally a tear as the great man dies.

Almost every actor has done well but I am unlikely to forget Christopher Plummer's Tolstoy for a while.

courtesy: Sony Pictures Classics

Choice of Helen Mirren to play Sophia (Sonya), Tolstoy's wife,  is very clever. For my taste, Ms. Mirren, 67 still looks pretty attractive and that quality is a key to the character she plays.

 courtesy: Brenna/ Jason Fraser and  dailymail.co.uk, July 2008

Vivian Gornick says: "It pained Sonya throughout her life that her only real hold on Tolstoy was sexual—neither her thoughts nor her desires kept his attention—and it pained her even more when that hold loosened. She herself never enjoyed making love, but when finally, in significant old age, he stopped coming to her, she was beside herself with shame, loss, longing. So often, throughout their years together, he had bolted, leaving her entirely alone—sometimes even when he was in the house—for days or weeks on end (her diary often reports an unspeakable loneliness). Yet she had gone on dreaming that ultimately she would have Tolstoy’s friendship and tender regard. When the sex went, and the friendship did not blossom, she grew desolate.

In the end the mixed nature of humanity itself proves the source of the great existential drama. To be mean and generous, depraved and decent, loving and murderous, not by turns but all at once—that, it seems, is the true burden of our existence. It is this humiliation that makes us rage at the heavens, this humiliation that has ever demanded of us some over-arching myth of redemption that will atone for the despair of our own self-divisions."

I bought 'War and Peace' long time ago but have not read a page yet but in recent months have managed to read a few stories from 'Master and Man and Other Stories' translated with notes by Ronald Wilks and Paul Foote, 2005.

There are so many funny stories about Tolstoy but I found the following by Chekhov probably the funniest:

"You know, I recently visited Tolstoy in Gaspra. He was bedridden due to illness. Among other things, he spoke about me and my works. Finally, when I was about to say goodbye he took my hand and said, ‘Kiss me goodbye.’ While I bent over him and he was kissing me, he whispered in my ear in a still energetic, old man’s voice, ‘You know, I hate your plays. Shakespeare was a bad writer, and I consider your plays even worse than his.’”

Remember there is a lot of cheek kissing and whispering among men in "The Godfather"- I , II and III. The story above made me imagine Leo Tolstoy as Don Tolstoy! 

By the way, I am not the first guy to link up Tolstoy and Francis Ford Coppola.

Tom Streithorst has already done it: "The Iraq war was forged in a bubble, and fought in a bubble. It is a tragedy that deserves its Tolstoy. It still awaits its Francis Ford Coppola."

I have already posted about the late Sadanand Rege's (सदानंद रेगे) poem on Tolstoy  

The first poem of Rege I saw, as a teenager around 1980,  was on D G Godse's (द ग गोडसे) visit to Mastani samadhi at Pabal (पाबळ). 

I realised immediately that this was a special talent. Not seen before in Marathi by me. Many years later I got the confirmation of it reading venerable Vilas Sarang (विलास सारंग).  

Rosamund Bartlett writes "Chekhov is indeed a great guide. But happily for us, he could never take life too seriously. A random entry picked from his notebooks reminds us of his irrepressible humour and his delightfully quirky view of the world:... "

Rege too was like Chekhov and I wish Rege saw 'The Last Station'. 

If he had, I am sure he would have come up with another poem on Tolstoy containing more irony and humour.

 AN Wilson writes:

 "From the first reading of War and Peace, it becomes clear that Tolstoy writes with the breadth and scope of Homer. Nowhere outside the Iliad do we find such a prodigious combination of artistic detachment from joy and suffering and yet at the same time such passionate engagement and sympathy. It is a paradoxical truth in these two European masterpieces, and Bartlett’s book gives us the sense of how both these godlike qualities, of indifference and empathy, were constantly present in Tolstoy’s soul."

I have to read 'WAP' to know Tolstoy's soul but after watching 'The Last Station' I feel I know a little bit about his body.  

I don't know about Greek Homer but Tolstoy in the movie often reminded me of American Homer Simpson! And it is a fitting tribute to Tolstoy because, as quoted at the beginning,  he believed ordinary people- the likes of Homer Simpsons- make history. He surely was ordinary in some respects and he certainly made history.

विष्णु चिंचाळकरना उमजलेले कुमार गंधर्व Kumar Gandharva as Understood by Vishnu Chinchalkar

Tomorrow January 12 2013 is 21st death anniversary of Pandit Kumar Gandharva (ಶಿವಪುತ್ರಪ್ಪ ಸಿದ್ಧರಾಮಯ್ಯ ಕಂಕಾಳಿಮಠ).

Wikipedia informs: 

"The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them."

If I had a vote, the late Kumar Gandharva's voice would be there. 

Lawewnce Krauss speculates if indeed ET life will ever find and decode them:

"I am glad they will be found to contain visual images of this beautiful blue planet as it once was, along with music, to demonstrate that intelligent beings once lived on Earth. It will also deliver simple greetings in hundreds of dialects from our species—perhaps giving the impression that we knew we were lucky to exist for a brief time on this cosmic speck, instead of suffering under the solipsistic notion that we somehow reigned supreme in a universe created for us."

Humility expressed in the quote above too would go well with Kumar's art.

 I understand almost nothing of music but he remains the greatest male singer and one of the greatest 20th century artists for me. I understand a little bit about Kabir and Bal Gandharva (बालगंधर्व) because of his music.

There is an excellent page on Panditji on Facebook. You may visit it here.

Courtesy that page, I was introduced to a very good artist Vishnu Chinchalkar (विष्णु  चिंचाळकर) 1917-2000.

Look at his following two pictures featuring Kumar.


 






These pictures are stunning in simplicity and yet convey Kumar's mien in all its majesty.

I have been very lucky. Some time during 1985-1987,  my friend Jayant Inamdar (जयंत इनामदार) and I attended at Karnataka Sangha, Matunga, Mumbai (कर्नाटक संघ, माटुंगा) lecture-cum-demonstration programme of Panditji, everyday evening, for almost a week. 

I remember Marathi poet Vasant Bapat (वसंत बापट) interviewing him. I still recall the late Mr. Bapat saying: I am here like a calf pushing his mother so that she lactates more! 

How true! No one in that audience- the late Gangadhar Gadgil (गंगाधर गाडगीळ) and his wife came almost everyday- could have really interviewed Kumar.  He transcended words every time he sang. He often asked (chided?)  his accompanists to play softly.

I also remember Kumar say that a lot of singers sing 'Miyan Ki Malhar' because they can's sing 'Malhar'! He also compared  raga to a painting where a singer works like a painter. 


I don't think I will ever attend a better live program than that in my life. And it was completely free. We had to just show up.

Virdhawal-I Turns 100 and, Even Better, Sells at 50!

Russ Kick, editor of  'The Graphic Canon'- Volume 1 and 2 quoted in The New York Times, November 30 2012:

 “We’re living in a golden age of the graphic novel, of comic art and of illustration in general. Legions of talented artists — who employ every method, style and approach imaginable — are creating such a flood of amazing, gorgeous, entertaining and groundbreaking material that it’s pretty much impossible to keep up with it all. What if a bunch of these artists used as their source material the greatest literature ever written?” 

 

Rachel Cooke, Guardian, November 30 2012:

"This year has delivered us a crop of graphic novels so rich and varied, you could wrap a different one for each family member and have done with other bookish presents altogether."

Virdhawal Khade (वीरधवल खाडे) is a champion swimmer and much better sportsperson than many of our star cricketers but I like him more because of his first name!

He however is Virdhawal-II in my life. The first one is Nath Madahav's (नाथ माधव) "Virdhawal".

Both are my heroes.

Recently, I bought a number of Marathi books priced at INR 50  each. They are reprints of old Marathi bestselling books that now are in public domain, their copyrights have expired. I am hoping to write on most  of them on this blog.

This is a great news for me because there was a time I was turning into bibliokleptomaniac, a book-thief!

Since I wish to own every book I want to read, the only hope for me to access forever-out-of-print Marathi books was Google Books. Read my earlier post on it here.

These low priced books are published by Samanvay Prakashan , Kolkapur (समन्वय प्रकाशन, कोल्हापूर) and their principal distributor is 'Ajab distributors', Kolhapur (अजब) phone 9422421502.

The prices printed on them are multiple times 50 but, at the moment, they are being sold at 50 each.

Reading public of Pune (पुणे) seem to have received them very well. There were crowds in the hall that were selling them. I don't have trade figures but the sales must be substantial.

One of those books I bought is "Virdhawal". Printed price INR 610.  It is 616 pages long.

Nathmadhav was the pen name of the late Mr. D M Pitale (द्वारकानाथ माधव पितळे) 1882-1928.  Read more about the author here and here.

Nathmadhav.  Isn't  he Virdhawal himself? Reading about his fight against his own disability, I feel he surely was one in real life.

Picture courtesy: Marathi Wikipedia and Government Of Maharashtra Cultural Information Portal.

This best selling book- 'Virdhawal'- was first published in 1913. As per the preface of the author for its second edition that was published in October 1923, the first edition was sold out within a year but the book could not be reprinted largely because of the high cost and the shortage of paper on account of World War I (1914-1918).

[Read Govindrao Tembe's  (गोविंदराव टेंबे) commentary on what two world wars did to Indian society and culture. I was almost in tears. Some day I will reproduce it on this blog.]

Artist: Unknown to me

I never read Virdhawal as a kid (8-10 years old) in the form of a 'words' novel but fell in love with it reading serialisation of it done in the form of a graphic novel by the late Mr. Bhaiyyasaheb Omkar (भैय्यासाहेब ओंकार) for a weekend edition of a Marathi daily (Kesari केसरी?) or a weekly. (Although I still recall many of the artist's pictures vividly, I forget the name of the publication).

 I never took clippings of them but I kept reading the issue for days. I also remember missing a couple of issues from the series, silently blaming my father for that and hurting badly for the miss.

I also remember his serialization of graphic novel of Marathi translation of H G Wells's 'The Time Machine'.

I remain grateful to the late artists- Pitale, Wells, and more than them, Omkar-  for lighting up my childhood.

I liked Omkar's art much more than that of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) and Chandoba (चांदोबा). For a few years, he was my most favorite artist.

Even today, I miss his art. Where can I lay my hands on Bhaiyyasaheb Omkar's graphic 'Virdhawal'?

When did I last see a great graphic novel in Marathi? Frankly, I have not seen any after the ones of Mr. Omkar I  have mentioned above. (ACK books I have seen are all mythological or biographical.)

World wide graphic novel as a medium is thriving.

This is how Tim Martin describes the experience of reading a graphic novel: "Reading a graphic novel is at once a complex and instinctive act. The reader is forced not only to parse several narrative streams – speech bubbles, the silent communication of figurative attitudes and scenic arrangement, repeated visual symbols, often a narrative commentary – but also construe them as a continuous sequence that represents the passage of time. It’s an act we perform without thinking about it, but is nevertheless a complicated piece of translation between the concrete and the abstract."

Why am I not getting the opportunity to perform that act in Marathi?

If not serious graphic fiction, erotic graphic fiction (NOT porn) could have thrived in Marathi. It's a very popular genre in English.

The following looks interesting to me.

Artist: Unknown to me , courtesy: The Independent, UK July 2012

Tim Pilcher, the author of a two-volume history, 'Erotic Comics: A Graphic History', writes about the subject in relation to India:

"In India, there are interesting online web-comics, which they call "Kirtu", which is Indian for erotic comics. Present day India—moralistically and socially—is very much like Victorian England. They’ve kept the strict English principles, which we have thrown out of the window and mixed that with a strong Hindu/Muslim moralistic ethos. To actually produce erotic comics in print form would be unthinkable in India. More than anything, pornography is technically illegal, although it is widely available: A lot of softcore, but very little hardcore. There is a healthy comics industry, but it’s primary target audience is a young readership, but country is on the tip of a cultural comics revolution, where they are starting to produce publications for an older readership.. There’s an online webcomic called Savita Bhabhi, about an archetypal frustrated housewife, who has these worldly sexcapades with various men. Because she is unhappily married, this is incredibly scandalous. That is a very revolutionary concept for a prudish country like India. A country where no woman would wear a bikini on the beach. Men and women swim fully clothed. It is quite bizarre, when you see it. And they stare at Westerners stripped down to their bikinis and swim-shorts. So Savita Bhabhi has caused huge scandal, and along with that, obviously, a huge readership. They got around sixteen million visitors a month. In 2009, the website was shut down by the Indian government, but they reopened another, shortly afterwards. It was originally started by a British Indian businessman—so it was actually produced in the UK, but aimed at the Indian market. That guy knew exactly what he was doing. Culturally, he wouldn’t have been able to do that if he was an Indian businessman in India. The shame would be too great."

I Steal from Both: The Simpsons and Henry James

Louis Bayar:

"No matter how many times you're reminded, you will always forget you're watching an animated show. Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner and Groundskeeper Willie, Barney and Apu and Moe and Ned Flanders and Krusty the Clown (with his superb initial "K") will seem more real than any flesh-and-blood television family. More real, maybe, than your own family because life can't distill us quite so succinctly into our essences. For that, we need art. Which "The Simpsons" manifestly is."

My younger brother Bhaiyya (Abhimanyu अभिमन्यु ) - one of  Vasant Sarwate's  (वसंत सरवटे) and the late Vijay Tendulkar's (विजय तेंडुलकर) favourite cartoonists-   introduced me to The Simpsons more than a decade ago. And the life has never been the same again.

Since then I have often looked at the world through the eyes of  The Simpsons.

Most times I have behaved like Homer Simpson, my mother and wife have been like Marge Simpson, my son and brother have been like Bart Simpson, my sister has been like Maggie Simpson, fundamentally most of my corporate bosses have been like Mr. Burns, whenever I have felt a bit intellectual I have been like Lisa Simpson, the cops have been like Chief Wiggum, politicians have been like Mayor Quimby, drivers on the roads have been like Otto Mann, when we had a tom cat - Chintya (c1969- 1981)-  he was like Snowball and slowly I am turning into Abe Simpson....

Whenever I get very critical of US and Americans- white and brown, I remember my indebtedness to that nation...She gave me 'The Simpsons' and Orson Welles...I forgive her and them...

As A O Scott says: 

“I have long been of the opinion that the entire history of American popular culture — maybe even of Western civilization — amounts to little more than a long prelude to “The Simpsons."

And thanks to the globalization, instead of Western  civilization, we can just say middle-class life.

There of course was a similar family in my past: C V Joshi (चिं. वि. जोशी) created Chimanrao's (चिमणराव)  family. That family to me is as dear as  'The Simpsons'. 

I have spent days reading and fantasizing about that family- how Chimanrao and co. might behave in a particular situation in my life.  TV serial based on it was good but not even close to the greatness of the original. You have to be Orson Welles or Yasujirō Ozu or Guru Dutt to capture its warmth on the TV screen!

In one of the greatest essays I have read in my life, 'Divine Comedy', Julian Gough writes:

 “A comparison between The Simpsons and a soap opera is instructive. A soap opera is trapped inside the rules of the format; all soaps resemble each other (like psychologically plausible realist novels). What the makers of The Simpsons did was take a soap opera and put a frame around it: "this is a cartoon about a soap opera." This freed them from the need to map its event-rate on to real life: they could map its event-rate on to cartoon life. A fast event-rate is inherently comic, so the tone is, of necessity, comic. But that is not to say it isn't serious. The Simpsons is profoundly serious. And profoundly comic. Like Aristophanes, debating the war between Athens and Sparta by writing about a sex strike by the women of Athens and beyond.

With its cartoon event-rate, a classic series of The Simpsons has more ideas over a broader cultural range than any novel written the same year. The speed, the density of information, the range of reference; the quantity, quality and rich humanity of the jokes—they make almost all contemporary novels seem slow, dour, monotonous and almost empty of ideas.

So steal from The Simpsons, not Henry James."

I steal from both! 

I may yet fail but no one can blame me for not stealing! 

 

courtesy: Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Sam Simon, Fox...

Look at the picture. It's a treasure trove. Look at the frame on the wall...Duff beer can, fish skeleton,  cupcakes on the carpet, TV remote, cat and dog sharing premium space on couch...Healthy food in Lisa's hands and junk in Bart's...How happy they look together...

They are wishing us happy 2013!