Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (2 page)

On the other hand, a critic notes,
“CYCLOPS
will continue to be read for pure pleasure for a long time to come … It is a great urban novel. Academic critics, in speaking of
CYCLOPS
, insist on the theme of fear and other things which are certainly relevant, but which sidestep the ‘details’ that make even high school students enjoy this novel …
CYCLOPS
will survive because it takes place on the street and in the smoke of cafés, because it is promiscuous, witty and full of fools.”
¹⁷

A new generation of scholars is rediscovering Marinković’s writing, bringing the precepts of literary theory to bear on his themes, characters, and structures in a variety of productive and engaging ways. Aside from the two articles cited here, there is very little critical writing available in English on Marinković’s work. The entry in the
Dictionary of Literary Biography
is a valuable general overview of his opus.

Aside from delighting generations of high school students, Ranko Marinković and
CYCLOPS
have entered into the cultural parlance with a television series and a 1982 film based on the novel
CYCLOPS
(directed by Antun Vrdoljak), and
Kiklop
[
CYCLOPS
] is the name of the most prestigious cultural award conferred annually in Croatia to winners in categories such as best editor, best prose work, best book of essays, best first book, best children’s book, best translation, etc. The
Vjesnik
newspaper also confers a “Ranko Marinković” best short story award.

I knew Ranko Marinković only briefly, late in his life, when he and I occasionally ran into each other at a Zagreb publishing company. Always the gentleman, Magritte-like in his impeccable gray coat and bowler hat, a twinkle in his eye, he’d raised his hat in greeting, and it is in this pose, hat in hand, eyes twinkling, that I will always remember him. Vlada Stojiljković I never met, but several friends of mine knew him well and tell of his fascination of many years with
CYCLOPS
, his commitment to the translation, the quandaries he regaled them with, and the solutions he devised for the book’s countless quips, puns, and verses. Hats off, then, to Yale University Press for bringing this marvelous novel to American readers!

1.
Gundulić’s dream (510) refers to the scene painted by Vlaho Bukovac on the stage curtain of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb.

2.
“Stories from the Olden Days” (432), the title of a popular collection of children’s stories.

3.
Leone from Krleža’s
Glembays
, 132.

4.
“We drank the blazing sun …” (42); “Each beech …” (527).

5.
“Zeus was a wonderful god …” (42); “a Pompeiian scene” (113); and “I have been on a cloud …” (145).

6.
“You are our leader!” (379), from the
Dubrovnik Trilogy.
The original line reads, “Gulls and clouds will ask us: who are you? what do you seek? … and our sails will reply: Dubrovnik sails! Dubrovnik seeks a barren reef, to hide her Liberty thereon.”

7.
“to be pure, to be pure …” (38); “a little smile on dear lips, a bunch of flowers in a water glass” (65); “and his feet are bloody …” (305); “A star on his forehead, a sparkle in his eye …” (512).

8.
See page 436.

9.
“to the queen of all women …” (456).

10.
The NIN award is still given out today for Serbian writers in Serbia.

11.
Ante Stamać reprinted the three articles (
Republika
11, no. 4 [2004]: 38-63) as part of a discussion of Marinković’s understanding of Ujević and his development of the character of Maestro.

12.
Tin Ujević figured large on the Yugoslav cultural scene during the first half of the twentieth century, as much for his scandalous behavior as for his poetry. He dedicated his life to art and became a legend in his own time, the archetype of the bohemian figure in the cafés of Split, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Zagreb, a quixotic public personality. Having spent most of the thirties in Sarajevo, Ujević moved to Zagreb in 1937, where he died of cancer in 1955, ten years before
CYCLOPS
came out.

13.
“Esej o pjesniku rezignacija,”
Republika
11, no. 4 (2004): 50.

14.
Ibid., 53.

15.
“Jeka ‘Ojađenog zvona,’”
Republika
11, no. 4 (2004): 57.

16.
Morana Čale, ‘The Fraction Man’: Anthropology of
CYCLOPS,” Slavica Tergestina
n. 11-12.
Studia slavica III
, Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori, May 2004, 83.

17.
Robert Perišić, “Ranko Marinković;, on the Occasion of His Death,”
Relations
, 3-4 (2004): 295-296.

Ellen Elias-Bursać

“MAAR …
MAAR …” cried a voice from the rooftop. Melkior was standing next to the stair railing leading down below ground; glowing above the stairway was a
GENTS
sign. Across the way another set of stairs angled downward, intersecting with the first, under the sign of
LADIES
. A staircase X, he thought, reciprocal values, the numerators
GENTS
and the numerators
LADIES
(cross multiplication), the denominators ending up downstairs in majolica and porcelain, where the denominators keep a respectful silence; the only sounds are the muffled whisper of water, the hiss of valves, and the whirr of ventilators. Like being in the bowels of an ocean liner. Smooth sailing. Passengers make their cheery and noisy way downstairs as if going to the ship’s bar for a shot of whiskey. Afterward, they return to the promenade deck, spry and well satisfied, and sip the fresh evening potion from MAAR’s air.

MAAR conquers all. When the darkness falls, it unfurls its screen high up on the rooftop of a palace and starts yelling, “MAAR Commercials!” After it finishes tracing its mighty name across the screen using a mysterious light, MAAR’s letters go into a silly dance routine, singing a song in unison in praise of their master. The letters then trip away into the darkened sky while giving a parting shout to the dumbstruck audience, “MAAR Movietone Advertising!”

Next there appears a house, miserable and dirty, its roof askew, its door frame battered loose, wrinkled and stained shirts, spectral torsos with no heads or legs, jumping out of its windows in panic. To
danse macabre
music, the ailing victims of grime proceed to drag themselves toward a boiling cauldron bubbling with impatient thick white foam. With spinsterish mistrust, wavering on the very lip of the cauldron (fearful of being duped), the shirts leap into the foam … and what do you know, the mistrust was nothing but foolish superstition, for here they are, emerging from the cauldron, dazzlingly white, one after another, marching in single file and singing lustily,
“Radion
washes on its own.” Next, a sphinx appears on the screen and asks the viewers in a far-off, desert-dry voice: “Is this possible?” and the next instant a pretty typist shows that two typewriters cannot possibly be typed at once. “And is this possible?” the sphinx asks again. No, it is also not possible for water to flow uphill. It is equally impossible to build a house from the roof down, or for the Sun to revolve around the Earth … “but it
is
possible for Tungsram-Crypton double-spiraled filament lightbulbs to give twice as much light as the ordinary ones for the same wattage …” and on goes a lightbulb, as bright as the sun in the sky, the terrible glare forcing the viewers to squint. Then a mischievous little girl in a polka-dot dirndl prances her way onto the screen and declaims, in the virginal voice of a girl living with the nuns,
“Zora
soap washes clean, cleaner than you ever saw … you’ve ever seen,” she hastens to correct her mistake, too late, the viewers chuckle. The little girl withdraws in embarrassment. She is followed by a traveler carrying a heavy suitcase in each hand, the road winding behind him in endless perspective. The sun beats him with fiery lashes from above, but his step is spry and cheery; with a sly wink at the audience he whispers confidentially, “You go a long way without tiring thanks to Palma heels” and displays the enormous soles of his feet: sure enough, Palma heels! Next comes a mighty horde of cockroaches, fleas, bedbugs, and other horrible pests, afforded air support by dense formations of moths and flies and escorted by speedy mosquito squadrons … but suddenly there is a clatter of heavy hooves and a Flit grenadier comes galloping into the fray, armed with the dreaded Flit spray can. Before long the battlefield is littered with dead bodies (of the pests). From the platen of a Remington grows the legendary portrait of the great Napoleon with a curl of hair, drunkard-like, down his forehead. As Napoleon grows so does the Remington, and when the two have covered the entire globe the Remington types across the equator the historic words “We have conquered the world” “… and ended up on St. Helena,” muttered Melkior, “don’t give yourself airs.” Afterward a Singer uses Eurasia and America to stitch a many-colored coat for portly Mr. Globe; it fashions black trousers from Africa, and a white cap from Greenland, and Mr. Globe chortles with glee. Bata asks a passerby tottering along with lightning bolts flashing from his corns, “Is that necessary?” “No,” replied Melkior, “not if you buy your shoes at Bata’s. Shoes are an Antaean bond with Mother Earth, the pedestrian’s secret power …” And there is Brill kissing human footwear with its polishes, two long-haired brushes curling and cuddling like two sly cats around a pedestrian’s feet; he walks on tall and proud, his shoes shining!—Kästner & Öhler’s, the Balkan’s largest department store, has spilled unbelievable and magic objects, “even the kitchen sink” out of its horn of plenty, and the viewers’ imagination pecks away among the luxuries. Julio Meinl desires to fill everyone to the brim with Chinese, Ceylon, and even Russian tea; as for coffee, Haag is the brand—it caters to your heart. Sneeze if you can after a Bayer aspirin! Darmol works while you sleep, and Planinka Tea has the patriotic duty to cleanse Aryan blood. Elida Cream looks after your complexion. Intercosma swears to afforest your denuded head sooner than possible. Kalodont is the arch enemy of tartar, while VHG asks you, rather saucily, if you are a man. Finally, First Croatian Splendid Funerals Company takes the respectful liberty of reminding you of your dignity and … well, see for yourself: black varnished hearses with baroque gold angels, horses with glossy black coats, a comfortable coffin, attendance of ideally sober personnel in admirals’ hats, making your death another success and a thing of almost poetic beauty …

From the tall roof MAAR announced
urbi et orbi
its glittering standard of living. Its mighty acoustics had all but drowned out a blind peddler’s feeble supplication issuing from a dark doorway, “Shoelaces, black, yellow—two dinars; ten envelopes, letter paper inside—six dinars …” The blind man’s monotonous litany sounded tired and unconvinced; the pathetic bit of verbal advertising aspired only to mask the begging, that much and no more.

Melkior took refuge in the doorway with the blind man and fell to watching: what can this MAAR thing hope to accomplish? The viewer stands entranced with his head thrown back and drinks in, henlike, the filmed comfort of well-being. From his earthbound condition he watches MAAR’s looming mirage, listening to this voice “from the other world” and is already intoxicated by the luxurious illusion of his eternal longing to be pampered—and then there comes the voice of the accursed petty things—the shoelaces, black, yellow, for two dinars … and he fingers his two dinars in his pocket and his petty need for shoelaces, black or yellow as the case may be. Tungsram-Crypton’s glare has dimmed … and what do I need the Flit grenadier for … and I see this business with Napoleon is just a ruse. … The evening has gone down the drain. To think that he was actually willing to die for the sake of First Croatian! Can’t they have blind people weaving baskets or something instead of letting them beg like this? Melkior felt the thought himself, through irritation with the beggar’s plea. Why indeed can’t they open a center with heating provided, for the poor blind people to gather, think of the savings on electrical lighting … he made to redress his cruel thought, even bought a pair of yellow shoelaces (although he needed black) and generally cast about for a way to help the blind man. … He dropped a silver piece on the ground, picked it up again, and asked him, “You lost this coin, didn’t you?” “Could be, I’ve got a hole in my pocket,” replied the blind man half-jokingly, just in case, but he did, eagerly, accept the coin.

The quaint act of charity moved a person nearby. A clerical collar around his neck, the man had cast only a passing, sadly indifferent glance up at MAAR’s magic tricks as he squeezed through the throng. Then his spirits soared with a “true glow” when Melkior found a way (and how Christian a way!) of being charitable to the blind man. “When giving alms, no need to make a show of it.” He patted Melkior on the shoulder and, giving him an approving smile, dipped into the crowd again. Melkior only managed to catch a glimpse of his head, wrinkled, sad, wrung between the hands of some terrible misfortune, and a pair of large ears thereupon, jutting grimly out on either side. He was astounded by how oddly large they were, so similar to a very familiar and well-remembered pair. … But back in those days the head had been ruddy and full, young and terrifying, with those selfsame batwing ears amid waves of thick hair which protected them from ridicule.

“That pale scrawny neck!” cried Melkior in a low voice, “is it possible?”

After him, then! He had to see those ears again!

But who is to know whether or not ears have a hiding place for their memories? A secret spring-catch drawer from which at night, when they burrow into solitude, they take out trinkets to caress and sob over?

Melkior launched into a romantic tale about the mysterious soul of a priest roaming through the urban hustle and bustle seeking peace and salvation. … But the romantic tale is something else. … Those ears carry with them a different secret, one that darkened his entire childhood. He still wears the catechistic slaps, riddlelike, on his cheeks. And all that subsequently befell Dom Kuzma was cobbled together by his imagination into a story of a man apart. He was even ready to proclaim Dom Kuzma a martyr, for all that the martyr had whacked a pair of red-hot slaps on his darling cheeks. (The older ladies used to say at the time how “that child” had such darling cheeks—and they would kiss him, even nibble at his cheeks, the old maids.)