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

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)