ऑडेन, मर्ढेकर, जोव्वानी ब्बेलिनी आणि इनग्लोरियस बास्टर्डस...Auden's Ominous Ballad and The Agony in the Garden

खालील मजकूर, थोड्याफार फरकान, मी जून १५ २०१७ला फेसबुक वर पोस्ट केला होता:

"कै. म वा धोंड एक गोष्ट सांगायला (बहुदा) विसरतात , ते म्हणजे मर्ढेकरांच्या कित्येक कवितेतली गेयता ... हो, हो गेयता... मर्ढेकरांच्या कित्येक कविता मी गुणगुणल्या आहेत , अजूनही करतो.... माझ्या लेखी कोणताही कवी गेयतेशिवाय फार मोठा होऊच शकत नाही... पहा अरुण कोलटकर... ते तर काय बॉब डिलन चे चहाते ....

तोच प्रयत्न श्री व सौ पुलंनी जाहीर कार्यक्रमांतून केला पण नंतर सगळी गर्दी पुलंना बघायला जमु लागली (माझ्या वडिलांनी तो कार्यक्रम नाशिकला बघून समाधान व्यक्त केल होत)... कै. आनंद मोडकांनी मर्ढेकरांच्या 'बदकांचे गुपित'ला छान melancholic संगीत दिल आहे.... 

गेयतेच्या महत्वाचे एक उदाहरण ... कित्येक वेळा मी तयार केलेल्या मर्ढेकरांच्या फेसबुक पेज वर ऑडेन यांचा मर्ढेकरांवरच्या प्रभावाचा उल्लेख  झाला आहे ... त्या ऑडेन यांचे....

१९८३ची गोष्ट. मी एनआयबीएम, नेपियन सी रोड च्या लायब्ररीतुन एक मॅनेजमेंट सायन्सचे पुस्तक बॉरो केले होते. त्या पुस्तकात मी पहिल्यांदा ऑडेनयांची अंशतः उद्धृत केलेली खालील कविता वाचली आणि ती पूर्ण स्वरूपात मिळवून/ वाचून डायरेक्ट गुणगुणायलाच लागलो, इतका तीच्या व त्यांच्या प्रेमात पडलो... ही ती कविता, ballad :

"O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.

O what is that light I see flashing so clear
Over the distance brightly, brightly?
Only the sun on their weapons, dear,
As they step lightly.

O what are they doing with all that gear,
What are they doing this morning, this morning?
Only their usual manoeuvres, dear,
Or perhaps a warning.

O why have they left the road down there,
Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling?
Perhaps a change in their orders, dear.
Why are you kneeling?

O haven't they stopped for the doctor's care,
Haven't they reined their horses, their horses?
Why, they are none of them wounded, dear,
None of the forces.

O is it the parson they want, with white hair,
Is it the parson, is it, is it?
No, they are passing his gateway, dear,
Without a visit.

O it must be the farmer who lives so near.
It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning?
They have passed the farmyard already, dear,
And now they are running.

O where are you going? Stay with me here!
Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving?
No, I promised to love you, dear,
But I must be leaving.

O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,
O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;
Their boots are heavy on the floor
And their eyes are burning."

ही कविता १९३२ किंवा १९३६ साली लिहली गेली आहे.

हे वाचून माझ्या डोळ्यासमोर काय येत असेल तर - पहिले- दुसरे महायुद्ध, रशियन ऑक्टोबर क्रांती, चीनमधील सांस्कृतिक क्रांती यांच्या निमित्ताने झालेले असंख्य सामान्य , निरपराध लोकांचे अनन्वित हाल.... असं वाटतय की, कवितेत आहे, युरोपातील एका खेड्यातील नवरा-बायकोँवर गुजरलेला बाका प्रसंग.... शत्रू सैन्य दारापर्यंत येऊन पोचले आहे.... नवरा किंवा बायको , बहुदा नवरा, पळून जाऊ शकत आहे पण दुसऱ्याला ते शक्य नाहीये....अत्यंत साधे शब्द वापरून तयार केलेले एक हृदय विदारक चित्र माझ्या डोळ्या समोर उभे राहते.... डोळ्यात पाणी येते...

तुम्ही 'इनग्लोरियस बास्टर्डस' (Inglourious Basterds), २००९ सिनेमा पहिला असेल तर क्रिस्तोफ वाल्ट्झ फ्रेंच शेतकऱ्याशी, त्याच्या घरात दडलेले ज्यू कुटुंब शोधून काढायसाठी, कसा वागतो ते आठवा.

Christoph Waltz and Denis Ménochet

सौजन्य : Universal Pictures 

ऑडेन यांनी युद्धा बद्दल काही अप्रतिम कविता केलेल्या असल्यामुळ हा माझा समज दृढ झाला.

 रिचर्ड डव्हेनपोर्ट-हाईन्स ( Richard Davenport-Hines) मात्र आपल्याला ह्या कवितेबद्दल हे सांगतात:

"...Religious symbolism was important to Auden in the early 1930s though he did not count himself a Christian. In October 1932, for example, apparently after looking at Bellini's picture The Agony in the Garden depicting the arrest of Jesus and hanging in the National Gallery, he wrote his ominous ballad beginning 'O what is that sound which so thrills the ear'. It is not a Christian poem, and yet it was Christian imagery that excited him to write it..."

('Auden', १९९५)

जोव्वानी ब्बेलिनी (१४३०-१५१६) यांचे हेच ते अप्रतिम चित्र :

 

  सौजन्य : Wikimedia Commons

 नीट पहा... आकाशात तांबड फुटतय ('What are they doing this morning, this morning?'), येशु प्रार्थनेत आहे... आकाशात अँजेल आहे पण खाली जुडास ('O it must be the farmer who lives so near. / It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning?') येतोय, रोमन सैन्या ('Only the sun on their weapons, dear,') बरोबर, येशूला पकडायला व  क्रूसावर लटकवायला आणि म्हणून... "Their boots are heavy on the floor/ And their eyes are burning" वगैरे...

पण ऑडेनना काही वाटत असो,  रिचर्ड डव्हेनपोर्ट-हाईन्सना काही वाटत असो, कविता वाचून (चित्र पाहून) माझ्या सारख्या वाचकाला काय वाटते हे सर्वात जास्त महत्वाचे आहे...आणि म्हणून मी मे २९ २०१७ला फेसबुक वरच्या पोस्ट मध्ये म्हटल :

"...दुसर मला हे समजत नाही की कवीला exactly काय म्हणायचे आहे हे जाणून घ्यायचा इतका राक्षसी आग्रह का? कवी काय म्हणायच ते म्हणून मोकळा झाला. आता आपण आपल्याला योग्य अर्थ घेऊया."

ता. क. डव्हेनपोर्ट-हाईन्सनायांचे आणखी एक वाक्य पहा : .Religious symbolism was important to Auden...तसाच तो मर्ढेकरांना महत्वाचा होता... म्हणूनच विलास  सारंग म्हणतात : बा. सी. मर्ढेकर: धार्मिक कवी ... "आधुनिक काळाला अनुसरून ते एक विशिष्ट दैवत भजत नाहीत, तर ईश्वराच्या व्यापक संकल्पनेवर त्यांचा रोख आहे." ..... मराठीतील माझे आवडते कवी सदानंद रेगे तर म्हणायचेच : " 'बायबल' माझं आवडतं पुस्तक आहे."....

जेंव्हा जेन मॅन्सफील्ड यांचे उरोज सोफिया लॉरेन यांच्या जवळजवळ ताटात गेले...Jayne Mansfield, 50th Death Anniversary

#50YearsOn
#50YearsOnJayneMansfield

Today June 29 2017 is 50th death anniversary of Jayne Mansfield

J. G. Ballard, 'Atrocity Exhibition', 1970: 

"Were her breasts too large? No, as far as one can tell, but they loomed across the horizons of popular consciousness along with those of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Beyond our physical touch, the breasts of these screen actresses incite our imaginations to explore and reshape them. The bodies of these extraordinary women form a kit of spare parts, a set of mental mannequins that resemble Bellmer’s obscene dolls. As they tease us, so we begin to dismantle them, removing sections of a smile, a leg stance, an enticing cleavage. The parts are interchangeable, like the operations we imagine performing on these untouchable women, as endlessly variable as the colours silkscreened on to the faces of Warhol’s Liz and Marilyn." 

Margaret Anne Doody, London Review of Books, June 1997:
"...In the period after World War Two, by contrast, and especially throughout the Fifties, women had to try to pad out their breasts, to match the attractions of bosomy stars like Rosalind Russell, Marilyn Monroe or the egregious Jayne Mansfield. Brassieres entered the consciousness already colonised by Freud, and anxiety about bosom shape afflicted all women, even young girls who were urged to get into a ‘training bra’ as soon as they could. There was a boom in the bust..."
 

 

Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield, 1957

courtesy: Copyright holders of the picture

 I must have seen Ms. Mansfield's pictures first in Life that my father used to bring home. She then was alive. I must have learned about her death many years after the event. I don't remember when I first  saw the 60-year-old picture above. Of course, once I saw it, it was almost impossible to forget it.

After maintaining silence for decades, Ms. Loren talked about this picture to Entertainment Weekly in 2014:

"...'Look at that picture. Where are my eyes?' Sophia told the publication. 'I'm staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate.' Indeed, the beauty - whose new memoir Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life will be released on Tuesday - looks put out that Jayne would let her chest be on such blatant display..."

Jocelyn Faris:

“...At 2:25 A.M. on June 29, 1967, Jayne Mansfield, Sam Brody, and Ronnie Harrison (a driver employed by Gus Stevens) were instantly killed in a freak automobile accident thirty miles from downtown New Orleans. Their car rear-ended a semi-truck in a white cloud of fog being produced by City of New Orleans mosquito spraying equipment. The three adults in the front seat received skull fractures and died instantly...

...Celebrity seekers sought to be with Jayne, even in death: "Her family had sought to avoid the sharp spotlight of publicity which the 34-year-old Miss Mansfield relished all her life. But the public craving to be near a celebrity, even in death, created a circus atmosphere in the tiny borough where she had spent several years of her early childhood . . . Spectators broke through police lines and ran across grass-covered graves to snap photographs of the bronze casket with its blanket of pink roses."...”

टागोरांचा टीरोलियन ड्रेस घातलेला गूढवाद...Franz Kafka on Indian Religious Devotions and Rabindranath Tagore

फ्रान्झ काफ्का भारताबद्दल अस बोलले होते:

“...I lent Kafka a German translation of the Indian religious text, the Bhagavad Gita.

Kafka said, ‘Indian religious writings attract and repel me at the same time. Like a poison, there is something both seductive and horrible in them. All these Yogis and sorcerers rule over the life of nature not because of their burning love of freedom but because of a concealed and icy hatred of life. The source of Indian religious devotions is a bottomless pessimism.’ ...”

(‘Conversations with Kafka’ by Gustav Janouch, 1951/ 2012)

डॉक्टर सर्वपल्ली राधाकृष्णन याला काहीस उत्तर अस देतात :

“...The main charges against Indian philosophy are those of pessimism, dogmatism, indifference to ethics and unprogressiveness.  Almost every critic of Indian philosophy and culture harps on its pessimism. We cannot, however, understand how the human mind can speculate freely and remodel life  when it is filled with weariness and overcome by a feeling  of hopelessness. A priori, the scope and freedom of Indian thought are inconsistent with an ultimate pessimism. Indian philosophy is pessimistic if by pessimism is meant a sense of dissatisfaction with what is or exists. In this sense all philosophy is pessimistic. The suffering of the world provokes the problems of philosophy and religion. Systems of religion which emphasise redemption seek for an escape from life as we live it on earth. But reality in its essence is not evil....”

 (Dr. Sarvepalli  Radhakrishnan, 'Indian Philosophy Vol I & II', 1923)

थोडक्यात : काफ्का जे म्हणत होते  ते नवीन नव्हते पण त्यांच्या बोलण्यात दम आहे. भारतीय तत्वज्ञाना बद्दल ह्या अंगाने चर्चा अलिकडे कुठ वाचली नाहीय.

याच पुस्तकात काफ्का टागोरांबद्दल काय म्हणतात ते पहा:

"...I repeated Reimann’s amusing story about Kurt Wolff, the Leipzig publisher, who at eight o’clock in the morning rejected a translation of Rabindranath Tagore, and two hours later sent the firm’s reader to the central post office to reclaim the rejected manuscript, because in the meanwhile he had seen in the paper that Tagore had won the Nobel Prize.

‘Odd that he should have refused Tagore,’ said Franz Kafka slowly. ‘Tagore is after all not very different from Kurt Wolff. India and Leipzig, the distance between is only apparent. In reality Tagore is only a German in disguise.’

‘A schoolmaster, perhaps?’

‘A schoolmaster?’ repeated Kafka gravely, drew down the corners of his tight-pressed lips, and slowly shook his head. ‘No, not that, but he could be a Saxon – like Richard Wagner.’

‘Mysticism in Tyrolean dress?’

‘Something like that.’

We laughed."

रिचर्ड वागनर यांची ज्यू संबंधात तयार झालेली प्रतिमा ध्यानात घेता ज्यू काफ्का यांनी त्यांचा केलेला उल्लेख लक्षणीय आहे. तसेच त्यांच्या पोषाखाची केलेली किंचित थट्टा ('we laughed') सुद्धा : टीरोलियन ड्रेस घातलेला गूढवाद.... टागोरांच्या रेशमी छाटीची महाराष्ट्रात पण काही गोटातून थट्टा होत असे..... 

on the left Vintage Tyrolean dresses, on the right, sitting, the late Mr. Rabindranath Tagore with a companion

courtesy: blue17.co.uk and Timesnow

कै विलास सारंगांनी हे बहुदा वाचल नसणार. मला कै दुर्गा भागवत आणि त्यांची या सगळ्यावरची प्रतिक्रिया ऐकायला खूप आवडले असते.

Once you learn, though, you’ll never forget

Today June 21 2017 is International Yoga Day

J. B. Handelsman's Ben-Hur err Ben-Him!

Today June 20 2017 is 10th death anniversary of John Bernard "J.B." Handelsman (1922-2007)

There have been (ok) Ben-Hur, 1959 and (lousy) Ben-Hur 2016 but I like Handelsman's Ben-Hur err Ben-Him most!

(Read every word from the frame below to have a blast.)

courtesy: J. B. Handelsman and Punch

An Evening in Paris@50

'An Evening in Paris' turns 50 this year. I could not find the date it was released in 1967.

I have written about it on this blog on December 5 2007: "An Evening in Paris (1967) is one of my favourite movies.

First time, we (my brother, my cousin, I)  watched its matinee show (3 PM) at Kolhapur (Venus cinema?) by standing in an overwhelming queue like the one below to buy a ticket.

 Artist: Anonymos, Vangmay Shobha, Diwali 1970 (वाङ्मय शोभा, दिवाळी १९७०)

I thoroughly enjoyed it. What did I like?

Shammi Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor…music of Shankar - Jaikishan, Rajendranath and bikini clad Sharmila Tagore.

In Hindi films, rarely a woman has looked as sensuous as her, without a touch of vulgarity..."

  The late Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore in the late Shakti Samanta's 'An Evening in Paris'

courtesy:  the current copyright holders of the feature

...तरिहि नव्या स्त्रीची मेली ॥ हौस कशि असे हो...Welding David Teniers the Younger & G B Deval Together

आज, जून १४ २०१७, गोविंद बल्लाळ देवल यांची १०१वी पुण्यतिथी आहे

पद्य ( राग --- पिलृ : त्रिताल ):

काय पुरुष चळले बाई ॥ ताळ मुळीं उरला नाहीं ॥ धर्म---नीति ---शास्त्रें पायी ॥ तुडविती कसे हो ॥धृ०॥

साठ अधिक वर्षें भरलीं ॥ नातवास पोरें झालीं ॥ तरिहि नव्या स्त्रीची मेली ॥ हौस कशि असे हो ॥१॥ घोडथेरडयांना ऐशा ॥ देति बाप पोरी कैशा ॥ कांहिं दुजी त्यांच्या नाशा ॥ युक्ति कां नसे हो ॥२॥

 शास्त्रकुशल मोठे मोठे ॥ धर्म---गुरुहि गेले कोठें ?॥ काय कर्म असलें खोटें ॥ त्यांस नव दिसे हो

('संगीत शारदा', १८९९)

.....and with apologies to the late Mr. Teniers

‘An Old Peasant Caresses a Kitchen Maid in a Stable', c 1650

 The Artist:  David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690)

Mr. Jonathan Jones of The Guardian writes about the picture:

"Gross! An elderly man pays creepy attentions to a young woman in this glimpse of rural life more than 350 years ago. Teniers used to be the most famous by far of all painters of “genre scenes”, as paintings of the everyday were called. Now he is forgotten compared with Vermeer, whose tender realism moves us more. Teniers reflects a contemptuously hierarchical age when the lower orders were to be laughed at, but his paintings do show what peasant villages looked like before the industrial revolution."