मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

सूर्यफुले हाती ठेवणारा कवी…Namdeo Dhasal



Dylan Thomas:



“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light…



…And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
  
George Santayana:

"Schopenhauer thought tragedy beautiful because it detached us from a troubled world and did not think a troubled world good, as those unspeakable optimists did, because it made such a fine tragedy."




"...Van Gogh never suggested that the sunflower had any religious meaning for him, though it is customarily associated with humanity's love of God, or Christ. But he did link it on two occasions to gratitude. He admits in one letter: "My paintings are … a cry of anguish while symbolising gratitude in the rustic sunflower."..."

I have never forgot following lines of poet Namdev Dhasal (February 15 1949 - January 15 2014) since I read them in class X,  1974-75.

"...सूर्यफुले हाती ठेवणारा फकीर हजारो वर्षानंतर लाभला
आत्ता सूर्यफुलासारखे सूर्योंमुख झालेच पाहिजे."

('आत्ता', नामदेव लक्ष्मण ढसाळ, गोलपिठा, १९७१ )

[ ("After thousands of years, we met a fakir who handed to us sunflowers
now we must become sun-facing like sunflowers"

('Aatta', Namdev Lakshman Dhasal, Golpitha, 1971)]


Tragedy in the hands of the late Mr. Dhasal was beautiful like fiery sunflowers. Like Van Gogh, those flowers also perhaps were his 'cry of anguish', while symbolising his gratitude towards Dr. B R Ambedkar (डॉ भी. रा. आंबेडकर).

But he never thought the world around him good because it made such a fine tragedy.


                                                            Van Gogh's Sunflowers, 1888

Courtesy: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and The Guardian


I don't think NLD's rebellion in Marathi literature was pointless.



Artist: Robert Kraus, The New Yorker, April 9 1960