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

Morning Sun...John Williams, Edward Hopper

 “For the past several years, since shortly after my arrival upon this island of Pandateria, it has been my habit to arise before dawn and to observe the first glimmer of light in the east. It has become nearly a ritual, this early vigil; I sit without moving at an eastern window, and measure the light as it grows from gray to yellow to orange and red, and becomes at last no color but an unimaginable illumination upon the world. After the light has filled my room, I spend the morning hours reading one or another of those books from the library that I was allowed to bring with me here from Rome. The indulgence of my library was one of the few allowed me; yet of all that might have been, it is the one that has made this exile the most nearly endurable. For I have returned to that learning which I abandoned many years ago, and it is likely that I should not have done so had not I been condemned to this loneliness; I sometimes can almost believe that the world in seeking to punish me has done me a service it cannot imagine.

It has occurred to me that this early vigil and this study is a regimen that I became used to many years ago, when I was little more than a child…”

(‘II. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)’, ‘Augustus’ by John Williams, 1972)

 'Morning Sun', 1952 by Edward Hopper 

(Edward Hopper's wife, Josephine N. Hopper, served as his model)

दुर्गाबाईंचा भाबडेपणा आणि पी. व्ही. नरसिंह राव...P V Narsimha Rao and Durga Bhagwat

(ह्या  पोस्टचा बराच भाग २०१७ साली  फेसबुक वर मी प्रसिद्ध केला होता.)

दुर्गाबाईंनी भारताचे तत्कालीन पंतप्रधान पी व्ही नरसिंह राव यांना १ मार्च १९९६साली लिहलेले खालील पत्र वाचा.

 सौजन्य :दुर्गा भागवत यांच्या साहित्याचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स, ललित , दुर्गा भागवत विशेषांक , ऑगस्ट २००२

मला ८६ वर्षाच्या दुर्गाबाईंनी संपूर्ण आयुष्य राजकारणात घालवलेल्या रावांना दिलेल्या 'विशुद्ध चारित्र्याचे' सर्टिफिकेट वाचून हसू आले. स्वतः श्री रावांना ते वाक्य वाचून नेमके काय वाटले असेल?

दुर्गाबाई खरतर मॅकियावेली (Niccolò Machiavelli) च्या अभ्यासक. बरेच भारतीय लोक मॅकियावेली यांना पाश्चिमात्यांचा कौटिल्य चाणक्य समजतात. दुर्गाबाईंनी त्या दोघांच्यातला नेमका फरक स्पष्ट केला आहे. "...मॅकिएवेलीत (माक्याव्हेल्ली) इतिहासाचे पूर्ण भान आहे. तसे अर्थशास्त्रात नाही..."

त्याबद्दल मी अधिक डिसेंबर ४ २०१३ रोजी याच ब्लॉगवर इथे लिहले होते.

अलीकडील रावांच्या गाजलेल्या चरित्राचे ('Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India', 2015) लेखक विनय सीतापती त्यांच्या पुस्तकाची सुरवात ह्या एपिग्राफने, मॅकियावेली उधृत करून करतात!

A prince . . . must imitate the fox and the lion. For the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. (Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, circa 1513 AD)...

रावांबद्दलची त्यांची पुस्तकातील काही विधाने पहा :

"P.V. Narasimha Rao was born a fixer. "

“Rao’s dual disposition enabled him to be at once principled, at once immoral. Personally honest, he was no stranger to political corruption. Though the courts acquitted him in the JMM bribery case, the evidence available to this author suggests he was in on the conspiracy. While Rao could be sensitive to those he loved, he could also be petty to subordinates, distant to family, instrumental with friends, and vicious to his enemies."

"Even Rao’s association with women reflected a certain opacity. He lived away from his wife for much of their marriage. He had a relationship with Lakshmi Kantamma for more than a decade. From around 1976 till his death, he had a close friendship with Kalyani Shankar. ‘He liked that people around him couldn’t quite figure out the exact nature of these connections,’ a friend of Rao says. ‘He liked the ambiguity.’”

माझा निष्कर्ष : ह्या सगळ्यात विशुद्ध चारित्र्याला वगैरे अजिबात स्थान नाही!.दुर्गाबाईंच 'सर्टिफिकेट' हा भाबडेपणा वाटतो. त्या अजूनही १९७७सालातच होत्या- ज्यावेळी जयप्रकाश नारायण, मधु दंडवते यांच्या सारखे लोक अजून राजकारणात होते- अस वाटत.

ही अनिरुद्ध पवनचक्की, फिरणार सतत फिरणार...The Windmill

 हा अखंड नंदादीप जळणार, सतत जळणार... 

ही अनिरुद्ध पवनचक्की, फिरणार सतत फिरणार...

"The Windmill", 1850s by Jules Dupré (1811-1889)

Beauty Is Terror....नांगी असलेले फुलपाखरू

Donna Tartt, 'The Secret History', 1992:
“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.” 

कृतज्ञता: कलाकार : द ग गोडसे

Oppenheimer's Hamlet, Waste Land and Gita...श्रद्धेचा घडिला जीव जशी श्रद्धा तसा चि तो...

#Oppenheimer

 JAMES A. HIJIYA, "The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer", June 2000:

"...Oppenheimer acquired a deeper knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita in 1933 when, as a young professor of physics with interests ranging far beyond his academic specialty, he studied Sanskrit with Professor Arthur W. Ryder at Berkeley. The Gita, Oppenheimer excitedly wrote to his brother, was “very easy and quite marvelous.” This is the earliest direct evidence of the impression the book made on Oppenheimer, and a lasting impression it was. Later he called the Gita “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” He kept a well-worn copy of it conveniently on hand on the bookshelf closest to his desk and often gave the book (in translation) to friends as a present. He continued to browse in it while directing the bomb laboratory. After President Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Oppenheimer spoke at a memorial service at Los Alamos and quoted a passage from the Gita. Clearly this ancient book was on his mind as the atomic bomb neared completion, even before he saw the dazzling fireball from the Trinity test. In later years, too, he would look back on the Gita as one of the most important influences in his life. In 1963, Christian Century magazine asked him to list the ten books that “did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life.” Along with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Eliot’s Waste Land, Oppenheimer listed the Gita...."

What did he quote at FDR's funeral service on  April 15, 1945:

सत्त्वानुरूपा सर्वस्य श्रद्धा भवति भारत |
श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो यो यच्छ्रद्ध: स एव स: ||  (अध्याय १७, श्लोक ३)

विनोबा भावे त्याचे रूपांतर गीताई मध्ये असे करतात:

"जसा स्वभाव तो ज्याचा श्रद्धा त्याची तशी असे 

श्रद्धेचा घडिला जीव जशी श्रद्धा तसा चि तो "

"The faith of all humans conforms to the nature of their mind. All people possess faith, and whatever the nature of their faith, that is verily what they are."

Memorial service speech for President Roosevelt by J. R. Oppenheimer (courtesy: Berkeley Library Digital Collections, University of California)