Her Cat and Her Dog....

'Laziness', 1896 by Félix Vallotton

'Woman and a dog' 1935 by Christina Malman

शांता हेर्लेकर , महादेव पटवर्धन, माधव जूलियन....Marie Corelli's God's Good Man or Dr. Sigmund Freud's?

 माधव जूलियन यांच्या कडे मी पुन्हा पुन्हा येतो त्याचे एक कारण म्हणजे त्यांच्या आणि माझ्या वडिलांच्या आयुष्यात असलेलं विलक्षण साम्य. (या बद्दल विस्ताराने नंतर एकदा.)

कै. महादेव पटवर्धन यांना "ज्यूलियन् ऍडरले"  (Julian Adderley) असे म्हणायला त्यांच्या वर्गमैत्रिण शांता हेर्लेकर  यांनी १९११ च्या सुमारास सुरु केले. त्यावरून महादेव पटवर्धन हे स्वेच्छेने आणि आवडीने 'माधव जूलियन' झाले.

हे  ज्यूलियन् ऍडरले,  मेरी काॅरेली (१८५५-१९२४) यांच्या 'God's Good Man: A Simple Love Story'  (1904) या कादंबरीतील एक पात्र आहे, जे कविता करून दोन मुलींना वाचायला एकाच वेळी देत असत. आणि शांताबाई म्हणतात, माधवराव पटवर्धन तसेच  करत असत. (पृष्ठ: ३९-४०, 'माधव जूलियन', गं. दे. खानोलकर, १९५१-१९६८)

“... True — go on with the problem,” — said Julian vaguely, taking off his hat and raking his hair with his fingers as he was wont to do when at all puzzled— “The problem is— ‘why do I write poetry if nobody wants to read it’ — and ‘what’s the good’? Now, in the first place, I will reply that I am not sure I write ‘poetry.’ I try to express my identity in rhythm and rhyme — but after all, that expression of myself may be prose, and wholly without interest to the majority. You see? I put it to you quite plainly. Then as to ‘what’s the good?’ — I would argue ‘what’s the bad?’ So far, I live quite harmlessly. From the unexpected demise of an uncle whom I never saw, I have a life-income of sixty pounds a year. I am happy on that — I desire no more than that. On that I seek to evolve myself into SOMETHING — from a nonentity into shape and substance — and if, as is quite possible, there can be no ‘good,’ there may be a certain less of ‘bad’ than might otherwise chance to me. What think you?... ”

(यात्या पुस्तकातील काही अंश वाचून मला वाटले की शांताबाईंनी  Julian Adderley हे नाव माधवरावांसाठी योग्य काढले होते , ते माधवरावांना सुद्धा पटले आणि म्हणून ते त्यांनी 'घेतले'. माधवरावांचे Julian Adderley याच्याशी इतर अनेक बाबीत साम्य असावेसे वाटते.)

A simple love story?  शांताबाई आणि माधव जूलियन या दोघांमधल्या नात्याइतकी गुंतागुंतीची कथा मी कुठेच वाचली नसेल... एका क्षणी ते लग्न करायच ठरवतात पण ते फिस्कटत. त्या दोगांच्या संबंधात अनेक नाती निर्माण होतात आणि शेवटी आईचे चुंबन सुद्धा येते... २०व्या शतकातील पहिल्या भागात, मराठी पांढरपेशे लोक हे किती स्त्री-पुरुष नातेसंबंधात गोंधळून  गेले होते, याचे हे आणखी एक उदाहरण. (२१व्य शतकात ह्या सीमेवर सगळ आलबेल आहे असा याचा अर्थ नाही.)

ह्या मेरी काॅरेली आज २०२१ साली महाराष्ट्रात कितीजणांना माहित असतील? 

Marie Corelli (born Mary Mackay) was a best-selling British novelist of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, whose controversial works of the time often label her as an early advocate of the New Age movement.
In the 1890’s Marie Corelli’s novels were eagerly devoured by millions in England, America and the colonies. Her readers ranged from Queen Victoria and Gladstone, to the poorest of shop girls. In all she wrote thirty books, the majority of which were phenomenal best sellers. Despite the fact that her novels were either ignored or belittled by the critics, at the height of her success she was the best selling and most highly paid author in England.

जाड बाईवर कार्टून? काहीतरीच!.....Magnificent Inocencio Medina Vera

वजनदार स्त्रीयांवर आज कार्टून काढण अगदीच घिसापीटा वाटेल , पण १९०१साली इतक्या अप्रतिम शैलीत ते बघायला प्रचंड आनंद झाला असणार.... मला आजही होतोय...

भारतात जाड बायकांवर देशी विनोद तयार व्हायला कोणते साल उजाडले मला माहित नाही, मराठीत असे पहिले व्यंगचित्र केंव्हा तयार झाले कुणास ठावूक?

  “Crítica situación”, cover from “Madrid Cómico” magazine,1901.

Artist : Inocencio Medina Vera, 1876-1918

 

 

आकाशांतिल अधोरेखितें....1969 Moon Landing, Comets of the 1970's and Indians

 It may be little difficult to believe but the moon landing of 1969 captured the imagination of Indians as much as Americans or any other nation in the world. (Note:  most Indians could not watch or hear the event live.)

Just about every aspect of the culture, education etc. was impacted by the event. It became a part of the language, Hindi film songs etc.

The enclosed picture celebrates the same celestial event.

It shows that a wedding is taking place in space and solemnizing priest is asking the couple to go to the moon for their honeymoon because the rock is not too far away. (Since there is no native word for honeymoon in Marathi language, the English word honeymoon is translated as honey+moon!).

Bride and groom are shown like comets. 

Comet Bennett had graced the earth in 1970. My mother woke me up at pre-dawn and brought me down from our first floor bedroom to the street in front of our Miraj house to show the magnificent spectacle in the sky. I have never forgot the scene.

Sky was overwhelmed by the comet.  (I have often felt since my mother died in 2006 that her influence on me is like a great comet or comet Bennett. )

The artist is the late Shyam Joshi and the publication is Marathi magazine "Vangmay Shobha", Diwali, 1975, price is INR 6/-.

Just Drowning....Goya's The Dog

Stevie Smith (1903-1971):
"And not waving but drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning."

Stephen Phelan, The Guardian, January 2019:

"...And I keep coming back to The Drowning Dog, which is funny only in the sense that it makes me cry in public. What long-dead pet served as Goya’s model? The artist loved dogs and wrote about them often in his letters. It reminds me of my own dog, now old and grey around the snout. How long do we have left together? I look at this painting and I see in that poor animal our condition in general, and our historical moment in particular. I’m the dog and you’re the dog, our heads held just above a dark, rising tide."


Jonathan Jones, The Guardian:

"A dog is drowning in quicksand. Its grey head pokes defiantly out of the brown sludge, even as a dead yellow sky above insists there is no hope. No saviour....

...Surely it was the madness of this war, not deafness, that drove Goya into the darkest regions of his mind. Here in Zaragoza – where people fought French soldiers in the narrow streets, and where as a young painter he churned out consoling religious nonsense about miracles and holy pillars – Goya looked into hell. And the Black Paintings are what he saw"

'The Dog',  It is one of Goya's Black Paintings,

 Artist Francisco Goya, 1819-1823

कोण सांगितल होत तुला ह्या अवतारात यायला?...Egypt

Maxfield Parrish, "Egypt", 1922

  

स्त्री : "चल पटकन आवर , माझ्या ढुंगणाला केंव्हापासून चटके बसतायत."

पुरुष: "कोण सांगितल होत तुला ह्या अवतारात यायला?"

 

Why Language Was Invented....!

#मराठीभाषादिवस #कुसुमाग्रज१०९

Artist : Carolita Johnson, The New Yorker, January 2019

Negative Capability...We Still Talk of Keats’s poetry....After 200 Years

 The late Rishi Kapoor: "...There are times when I think there is nothing new left to be said, not just in India but anywhere in the world. Can you name one good story that has emerged in the last twenty years in world cinema? We still talk of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, of Keats’s poetry, of Picasso and Michelangelo’s paintings. We go and see the Pietà in Rome. We gawk at stuff that’s 500 years old. But there is nothing to wonder at today, no great writers, sculptors or artists, because there is nothing new to narrate or portray. The West has offered us new ideas in animation and futuristic films but there is little else. There is a void everywhere, not just in RK..."

Maria Popova: "...In a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, found in Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (public library; public domain) and dated December 21, 1817, Keats uses the phrase that has come to be the single most emblematic phrase of his entire surviving correspondence, even though he only makes mention of it once: “Negative Capability” — the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. Triggered by Keats’s disagreement with English poet and philosopher Coleridge, whose quest for definitive answers over beauty laid the foundations for modern-day reductionism, the concept is a beautiful articulation of a familiar sentiment — that life is about living the questions, that the unknown is what drives science, that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious..."

 Amy Wilcockson, History Today, February 2021: "... Since the 1930s Keats has continued to epitomise our ideal of the Romantic poet, with his beautiful verses, tragic life and early death. His writings are beloved by generations and his life continues to be scrutinised in the 21st century perhaps to a greater extent than ever before. Despite believing that he had ‘left nothing to make [his] friends proud of [his] memory’, it is ultimately owing to the work of those very friends and fans that his memory did live on. Thanks to them, on the bicentenary of his death, Keats is still read, studied and remembered."

 Artist:  John Buckland Wright (1897–1954) , illustration for The Collected Sonnets of John Keats 1930

तरीहि बकरी पाला खाते;...Still the Dogs Go On With Their Doggy Life: W. H. Auden@114

Today February 21 2021 is 114th birth anniversary of W. H. Auden
 
"...How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree...." 

('Musée des Beaux Arts', December 1938)

John Sutherland writes of the poem:

“...‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ is not, in itself, a difficult poem but it is baffling if one does not know where it is coming from. Auden was a much travelled poet. In 1938 he spent several months in Belgium. They were ominous months: war was looming.

The ‘Musee’ in the poem is the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, in Brussels. It has a magnificent collection of the 16th-century artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s paintings. We should picture the poet sauntering, on a quiet summer afternoon, through the galleries, savouring Bruegel’s masterpieces. The poem has no rhyme scheme – it’s a stream of unstructured consciousness.

The first painting the poet sees is that of Herod’s census – the sinister search for the unborn Jesus narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Mary and Joseph flee to Bethlehem. In the gospels ‘the miraculous birth’ is an all-important event. But in the painting it is no big thing. Not as important, for example, as unloading a cart is to the carter, or skating is to children on their ‘pond at the edge of the wood’. A baby is born in a barn? So what. It happens every day in Bethlehem. The census-taking is going on at an improvised office window. The painting is all detail, as is everyday life...”

Has this poem influenced B S Mardhekar's (बा सी मर्ढेकर) following poem?

"अजून येतो वास फुलांना

अजून माती लाल चमकते;

खुरट्या बुंध्यावरी चढून 

अजून बकरी पाला खाते.

... 

भूकंपाचा इकडे  धक्का 

पलीकडे अन्  युद्ध-नगारे;

चहूंकडे अन् एकच गिल्ला,

जुन्या शवांवर नवे निखारे.

 ...

तरीहि येतो वास फुलांना,
तरीहि माती लाल चमकते;
खुरट्या बुंध्यावरी चढून
तरीहि बकरी पाला खाते;

..."

'The Census at Bethlehem', 1566

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)

courtesy: Wikimedia Commons