My Morbid Fascination With Caravaggio's Head That Goes On Living

David Arnold, The Times Literary Supplement, July 2009:

"People lose their heads quite often in Hindu mythology. On a father’s whim, a son cuts off his mother’s head; demons are decapitated to expel the chaos-threatening poison lurking in their throats; the fidelity of wives and the faith of devotees are tested by beheading; and, in the rituals myth sustains, animals lose their heads to satisfy sacrificial imperatives. But, as Wendy Doniger reassures us in her courageous and scholarly book, in Hindu myth “beheading is seldom fatal”. Nor is it without meaning and purpose, for decapitation proves a means of achieving a creative fusion between apparently incongruous parts. Heads are restored, but they are also misplaced... "

Severing heads of the dead enemy soldiers? I thought it was so medieval. People who did that to the late Lance Naik Hemraj Singh's body must be severely punished.

The Indian Express, January 16 2013:

"Earlier in the day, (Sushma) Swaraj, who visited Lance Naik Hemraj Singh’s family in Mathura, was quoted by PTI as saying that “if his (Hemraj’s) head could not be brought back, we should get at least 10 heads from their side”. Swaraj was accompanied by BJP president Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh."

But look at the reaction of the lady who could be India's future Prime Minister: "at least 10 heads from their side." Any less medieval?

Business Standard's leader on January 15 2013:

"News TV's martial music drowns out its responsibilities...It should go without saying that the media has a role in informing and educating a citizenry about the issues of the day, providing background, context and holding the powerful to account. A case study in how not to go about this is currently being provided by the electronic media in its coverage of recent raids and counter-raids on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, in which two Indian soldiers have been killed, and one allegedly subjected to post-mortem mutilation. Instead of questioning the narrative, news television and some print outlets have instead blatantly beaten the drums of confrontation, hyping even relatively calm statements by the army chief into belligerent displays of national machismo."

On December 7 1760, just before the third battle of Panipat that was fought on January 14 1761, Maratha chieftain Balwantrao Mehendale (बळवंतराव मेहेंदळे) was killed by the enemy. The enemy wanted to sever his head and present it to their leadership. A few brave Maratha soldiers prevented that from happening and his whole body was brought back to the camp.

(Read a related post on the subject here.)

Cutting enemy heads was almost the norm then. Maratha armies too occasionally indulged in the practice. 

Last year a book titled "The Severed Head: Capital Vision" by Julie Kristeva, translated by Jody Gladding was published. It's about the way in which the severed head pops up in art, literature and real life.

Kathryn Hughes said in the review of the book for Guardian:

"Part of its fascination lies in the way it seems to offer a physical location for where our true self resides. Our face is what makes us knowable in the social world, our brain is what tells us who we are, and our speaking mouth is the conduit between the two. Lose our heads and we have lost everything, which is why the fact that we can come apart so easily is terrifying. It also explains a certain morbid fascination with how long a head can go on living after it has been severed."

Of all the books I read in my childhood, I remember those most which had memorable pictures. I have already  mentioned a few of them before.

One such book was "Sheesamarthcharitramrut" (श्रीसमर्थचरित्रामृत).

It claims to be a biography of Samarth Ramdas (समर्थ रामदास) told through stories. It's 159 pages long and was published in 1958, 350th birth anniversary year of Samarth. Luckily, I still have it with me.

I must have read it dozens of times. I once knew almost all of its text by heart but I now only remember its pictures.

They were drawn by Chitrakalabhushan Mr. J B Dikshit (चित्रकलाभूषण श्री. जि. भि. दीक्षित). Mr. Dixit's contribution has been generously acknowledged by the editor of the book in the foreword.

It has a couple of pictures of severed head of Bholaram (भोळाराम), disciple of Samarth. They scared me a bit tn the beginning but I guess they also increased the book's appeal to the child in the long run.

'Bholaram cuts off his own head' 

 The story of Bholaram of course is a folktale/myth as are most of them in the collection.

In 17th century Maharashtra severed head was not all that bizarre. As seen earlier, one reads in battles involving Maratha armies,  how the victors cut off the heads of the vanquished and carried them as trophies.

Battle was such an accepted motif then that even Tukaram (तुकाराम) says:

"वेढा वेढा रे पंढरी । मोर्चे लावा भीमातिरीं ॥1॥
चलाचला संत जन । करा देवासी भांडण ॥ध्रु.॥
लुटालुटा पंढरपूर। धरा रखुमाइऩचा वर ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे चला । घाव निशानी घातला॥3॥"

(#3970, Gatha गाथा)

(Hey besiege besiege Pandharpur, erect barricades (open fronts) on the banks of Bhima

come come devotees,  spar with the god

Plunder, plunder Pandharpur, detain the husband of Rakhumai

Tukaram says let's go, we have hit the target)

I wonder if Mr. Dixit saw or studied the following picture

David with the Head of Goliath, 1609–1610

Artist:  Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

"Perhaps the most powerful and personal work that Caravaggio completed during his final months in Naples is his David with the Head of Goliath. Everything that Caravaggio knew about youth and age, cruelty and compassion, life and death, sex and suffering, has been poured, without hesitation or holding back, into this image of the delicate boy—probably the same one who modeled for the brooding Saint John the Baptist now in Rome’s Galleria Borghese-  holding, at arm’s length, the head of the the bearded, shaggy, middle-aged man whom he has slain. The head of Goliath is Caravaggio’s last self-portrait. His features are thick and misshapen. One of his eyelids droops. On his forehead is a bloody wound, presumably the mark of the fatal stone from David’s slingshot, but which also suggests the disfiguring injuries the painter received when he was attacked at the Osteria del Cerriglio in Naples.,,

...Death has already frozen Goliath’s features into a rigid, Medusa-like mask, and what’s most disturbing is that death has given him no peace, no relief, no release from the agony and horror of his dying moments, from the shock of having been murdered by a boy so much like the youths whom, in more peaceful and less desperate times, Caravaggio would have loved."

(from 'Caravaggio /  Painter of Miracles' by Francine Prose)

I have quoted above: "how long a head can go on living after it has been severed.".... Caravaggio's head still lives!

p.s

After I published this post, I got this feedback in Marathi from a discerning reader of this blog Mr. Mangesh Nabar:

"

In case, you are not able to read Gurucharitra, I am giving below the lines from 6th Adhyay :

सुटला तेथुनि लंकेश्वर I स्तोत्र करीतसे अपार I शीर छेदोनि धरिले करी I  तंतु लाविले नीज अंत्रे II ४० II

सुटका झाल्यावर रावणाने शंकराची विविध प्रकारे स्तुति केली. आपल्या दहा डोक्यातील एक डोके कापले, त्याला तंबो-यासारखा आकार देऊन व आपल्या आतड्यांचाच तारेसारखा उपयोग करून सुस्वर गायनाने तो शंकराचे स्तवन करू लागला... 

शिर कापून आपुले देखा I यंत्र केले करकमळीका I नर काढून तंतुका I रावणेश्वर गातसे II ७२ II

अर्थाचा संदर्भ :- भावार्थ श्रीगुरुचरित्र - डॉ. सी.ग. देसाई"

I thought this was very beautiful and hence am appending it here.

Affirmative Action For Babalog Now in Cricket After Politics, Business and Cinema

On December 1 2007, in a post titled 'SAAWARIYA: A Beautiful Face of Nepotic, Inbreeding Inda', I said:

"Nepotism has not worked in sports yet. But who knows? I would bet on a Tendulkar or a Ganguly captaining Indian national cricket team around year 2025."

The Times of India reported on January 13 2013:

"Arjun Tendulkar's selection in U-14 raises questions of nepotism...Parents are also surprised at the presence of Arjun Tendulkar, son of batting legend Sachin. His best score, 124, had come last May in the Mumbai Under-14 trials for Khar Gymkhana against Goregaon Centre; his next best is a 70, scored last week for Shastri XI in the Vengsarkar Foundation Cup at Mahul. Considering that a triple centurion, four double centurions and nine hundred-makers in the Elite group have not made the mark, their parents have reason to feel short-changed...."

Artist: Joseph Farris, The New Yorker, 13 February 1971

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.