Catch Me If You Can!

Artist: Liana Finck, The New Yorker, February 2018

जीए त्यांच्या 'ऑर्फियस' पर्यंत कसे पोचले?...Myths, Ovid, Metamorphoses, and GA

Ovid, Metamorphoses (ca. 8 AD) as quoted by A. S. Kline, Ovid: The Metamorphoses (2000):
“[Orpheus] had abstained from the love of women, either because things ended badly for him, or because he had sworn to do so. Yet, many felt a desire to be joined with the poet, and many grieved at rejection.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke:

“There rose a tree. O pure transcendence!

O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!

And all was silent. Yet still in this silence

proceeded new beginning, sign and transformation.

...”

Ian Johnston:

“No work from classical antiquity, either Greek or Roman, has exerted such a continuing and decisive influence on European literature as Ovid's Metamorphoses. The emergence of French, English, and Italian national literatures in the late Middle Ages simply cannot be fully understood without taking into account the effect of this extraordinary poem. ... The only rival we have in our tradition which we can find to match the pervasiveness of the literary influence of the Metamorphoses is perhaps (and I stress perhaps) the Old Testament and the works of Shakespeare.”

दुर्गा भागवत:
"मिथ्यकथांमध्ये त्या त्या संस्कृतीचे प्रतिबिंब आपल्याला दिसतं. त्या त्या समाजाला गरज वाटते म्हणून मिथ्यकथा त्या त्या समाजाला स्फुरतात. त्या कथा मग समाजाला स्थिरता देतात. एका पिढीकडून दुसऱ्या पिढीकडे, एका ठिकाणाहून दुसऱ्या ठिकाणी हा वारसा जात असतो. म्हणून त्या टिकून राहतात. साहित्यात मिथ्यकथा रचण्याची शक्ती ज्या प्रमाणात अधिक आणि सात्यताने चालूच असते; त्याच प्रमाणात ते साहित्य, पर्यायानं  तो समाजही अधिक समर्थ, चैतन्यमय आणि सतत वर्धिष्णू असतो...."
(पृष्ठ १९, 'ऐसपैस गप्पा: दुर्गाबाईंशी' , ले: प्रतिभा रानडे, १९९८) 

जीएंची 'ऑर्फियस' - मूळ प्रकाशन 'सत्यकथा', १९७३; आता समाविष्ट 'पिंगळावेळ', १९७७-  ही माझ्या ब्लॉगवर आणि मी तयार केलेल्या फेसबुक पेज वर अनेक वेळा उल्लेख झालेली गोष्ट आहे.

आज पाहूया 'Orpheus and Eurydice' ह्या मिथचा कलेच्या प्रांतातून झालेला प्रवास. 

हिस्टरी टुडे, ऑगस्ट ८ २०१९ मध्ये खालील माहिती आली आहे :

"Orpheus and Eurydice, hand in hand, walk away from the fiery underworld and its deities, Pluto and Proserpine. Orpheus, singer, musician and poet, carrying a lyre on his shoulder, had recently married Eurydice, but on the day of their wedding, ‘in the very bloom of her life’, she was bitten by a viper and died of its venom. Distraught with grief, Orpheus descended into the underworld determined to restore her to mortality. He pleaded with Pluto and Proserpine for her return and his eloquence ‘melted the hearts of the gods and the denizens of the underworld, and all fell silent’. Even Cerberus, the fierce three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell, lies meekly at Proserpine’s feet.

The gods agreed to Eurydice’s return: Proserpine no doubt sympathetic as she recalled her own forceful abduction by Pluto. The only caveat was that Orpheus must not glance back at Eurydice until she was safely ensconced in the upper world. If he broke his word, she would descend once again into Hell.

In Peter Paul Rubens’ painting, Orpheus is depicted struggling to look ahead soon after the deities have consented to her return. On leaving the underworld, the lovers ascended a steep and misty path and, as they neared the earth’s rim, an anxious Orpheus looked behind for his bride, who fell and murmured a final farewell before dying again. ‘No reproach passed her lips’, according to Ovid in his Metamorphoses, because Eurydice now knew for certain that Orpheus loved her unconditionally.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has inspired numerous works of art: in literature, a cast as diverse as Boethius, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Pynchon and Carol Anne Duffy have created variants on its themes, while the filmmakers Jean Cocteau, in his trilogy – The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orphée (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1959) – and Marcel Camus, with Black Orpheus (1959), have captured its resonant tragedy. Fittingly, it is in music that the myth’s greatest legacy lies. L’Orfeo, Claudio Monteverdi’s opera, the form’s earliest surviving masterpiece, composed in 1607, became the first of many musical dramas to tackle the story: Christoph Willibald Gluck (Orfeo ed Euridice, 1774), Jacques Offenbach (Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858), Harrison Birtwistle (The Mask of Orpheus, 1986) and Anaïs Mitchell’s current Broadway hit Hadestown, set in America’s Deep South, are among those to have added to a canon that continues to expand."

जीए ह्या मिथ पर्यंत कसे पोचले ?

आपले आपण? का रोमन कवी Ovid यांच्या 'Metamorphoses' कडून? ('The Death of Eurydice' episode occurs in Book X of Metamorphoses, 8 AD)

माझ्या मते Metamorphoses कडून...  जसे ते 'यात्रिक' ला 'Don Quixote' कडून पोचले, तसे...वर दुर्गाबाई म्हणतात तस: एका ठिकाणाहून दुसऱ्या ठिकाणी, जीएंनी 'वारसा' ६,६०० किमी दूर (रोम ते धारवाड) मराठीत आणला.

पण त्यावर त्यांनी भारतीय पुराणे आणि तत्वज्ञानाचे (हिंदु, बौद्ध, जैन) संस्कार करून, मूळ मिथ बदलत (त्यांची युरिडिसी शेवटी जीवनात परत जायला नकार देते)  एक अजरामर प्रेम कथा निर्माण केली. जीए मूळ मिथ लाच, त्याच्या पूर्णत्वाला challenge  करतात असे वाटते.

Ovid यांना सुद्धा अशा  कथेचा आणि कथालेखकाचा अभिमान वाटला असता!

 ऑर्फियस, युरिडिसी, देव , देवता

'Orpheus' by Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-38.

Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin@80

ALAN CUMMING:

“...In reading these pages again, I also realized the fallacy of Isherwood trying to tell us he is merely a literary vessel, the unthinking camera of the first page with its shutter open, some sort of lucky Zelig of a scribe whose age and circumstance and sexual proclivity all led him to be at the center of a social and political storm in Berlin in the late twenties which he merely records for future regurgitation. This feigned modesty combined with his casual, often impersonal, very English style belies the passion and the pain of the time he is retelling, his spare and precise descriptions so brutal in their accuracy in nailing the human condition, even in circumstances most of us will never have experienced, and I certainly hope I never shall.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have been there to feel the turn in the public conscience, to actually see the beginning of the violence and the acceptance of Nazism as a mainstream political alternative and finally a national edict. But I don’t need to. Christopher Isherwood tells me, and each time I return he has more insights and revelations for me....”

 

Jean-Paul Sartre's "Intimacy" @80...How Much I Am Like Lulu

Wikipedia:

"Young Lulu struggles with authenticity as she seeks to liberate herself from social stereotypes. She decides to leave her husband Henri and run off with her lover Pierre at the insistence of her friend Rirette. She goes through several stages of realisation as she sees that the roles of wife, friend, and even lover are meaningless. However, she does not have enough strength to use the resulting angst to become an authentic being, so she finally decides to remain with her husband."

  courtesy: the artist and the publisher

You Can Lead a Horse to Water.....The Legendary Birth Of An Idiom

You Can Lead a Horse to Water.....

“I said drink, damn it, drink!”

 

Artist: Maddie Dai, The New Yorker, May 2018

ना सी फडके ...N S Phadke@125

#नासीफडके125

Today August 4 2019 is 125th birth anniversary of N S Phadke (1894-1978)

पदमभूषण कै  फडके हे कित्येक वर्षे मराठी वाचकांमध्ये अत्यंत लोकप्रिय लेखक होते. मराठी लेखनावरती त्यांच्या इतके मानधन (inflation adjusted) दुसऱ्या मराठी लेखकाने मिळवले असण्याची शक्यता मला खूप कमी वाटते. (त्यांच्या पुस्तकांच्या तत्कालीन किमती पहा.  काहीजणांचे पगार तेवढे किंवा कमी असायचे.)

फडके यांच्या कथा , कादंबऱ्या मला भिकार वाटतात पण विविध विषयांवरील त्यांचे कित्येक निबंध पुन्हा वाचावेसे वाटतात (close reading).. किमान त्यात बंदिस्त झालेल्या सामाजिक, राजकीय, कलेच्या,  क्रीडेच्या इतिहासासाठी ....त्यांचे कित्येक विचार सुद्धा अजून ताजे वाटतात... दुर्दैवाने कै विलास सारंगांसारख्या व्यासंगी टीकाकाराने सुद्धा फडक्यांच्या ह्या बाजूचा त्यांचे मूल्यमापन करताना अजिबात विचार केला नाहीये...

Artist: Dinanath Dalal

courtesy: copyright holders of Dalal's art

लिंड वॉर्डनी जी. एं. ची 'कमळी' काढली असती तर!....Lynd Ward, Alec Waugh and G.A.

जी. ए. कुलकर्णी: 
"...तिच्या (कमळीच्या) अंगावर चढल्यावर चोळीचा खण आतून एकदम आखूड होत असे की काय कुणास ठाऊक, पण त्याचे लाल इरकली काठ दंडात अगदी रुतून जात व पाठ बरीच उघडी राहत असे. तिच्याकडे पहिले की वाटे, हिचे रक्त आता  अगदी उकळायला आले आहे व ते आता काही फार वेळ दम धरणार नाही. ती एकटी असली तरी दहाजण आपल्याकडे पाहत आहेत अशाच तऱ्हेने तिचे अंग हले..." 
('कवठे', पृष्ठ १८२, 'पिंगळावेळ', १९७७)

Alec Waugh , ‘Hot countries : a travel book ‘, 1930:
“...While I was staying in Moorea there was a native girl who used to paddle across the lagoon most mornings in her canoe. She did a certain amount of work about the place, but most of her time she spent with a ukulele across her knees, humming Polynesian tunes, telling us Polynesian legends. It is of her that I think when I try to picture Loti’s Rarahu. She was simple and friendly and affectionate. In the accepted sense she was not beautiful. She would have looked ugly in a photograph or in European dress. But when she danced, or sang, or swam she achieved a perfect harmony with that setting of palm trees and golden sand. She belonged there. And it was exquisite to watch het swimming under the water; the brown arms and shoulders, the scarlet and yellow pareo, the long black hair floating behind her like a comet’s fan. Here was the eternal Rarahu. And this, I told myself, was the Polynesia that existed before traders and missionaries came to tamper with it....” 

Lynd Ward's wood engraving for Alec Waugh's 'Hot Countries', 1930