He was already striding along outside city limits, through the fields, down well-trodden muddy lanes. He still heard a tram’s ting-a-ling from the suburban terminus. Goodbye, Melkior said to it, the time for joking is over, I’m not accepting the ting-a-ling. I’m off to face Polyphemus the man-eater who now treads the Earth … in order to scuttle between his legs before he plugs the cave entrance with his rock. And when I’m out (if I’m out) I’ll shout for all I’m worth: Cyclops, you one-eyed bloodthirsty brute …—Why do you go and taunt the savage again?—lf only I could rob him of life and soul!
In the distance there resounded a loud crack. At nearly the same instant an angry insect in furious flight whizzed past Melkior’s ear. He hugged the Earth in a trice.
That’s the one from Essen, ha-ha, laughed Melkior’s nose in the wet grass. Missed me, ha-ha! Let the Earth hear, whispered Melkior into the mud beneath, let the pipes play: Polyphemus the Cyclops, the one-eyed bloodthirsty brute, Polyphemus the Cyclops, the one-eyed bloodthirsty brute …
A light was glowing around him, as if a setting sun had pierced the clouds. But Melkior was not lifting his head: he was prostrating himself before his great good fortune which had lain down along his back, pressing him to the Earth. Don’t stir, don’t move a finger, play dead, said Fortune. —I will, I will, I will, he panted obediently. … Because that thing may still be after me, right? asked Melkior sensibly.—Where are you off to, he said to an ant which was clambering up a leaf of grass and using its feelers to examine the strange thicket above its eye (and brushwood and brambles and brackens, says the ant perhaps), why do you go and taunt the savage? Don’t move, play dead. But the ant is not heeding Fortune … there’s nothing that can touch it … it is counting the hairs in Melkior’s eyebrow. Irritating, tickling …
Melkior is not even blinking, not betraying Fortune: if she says you’re dead, that’s it—you’re dead. The main thing is you know it and can tell yourself you’re dead, you mustn’t even blink. To live, now there’s the challenge. So tell the grass (Fortune advises him): don’t grow, spring won’t put forth its buds here. What is the point of flowers and green leaves? He leaves nothing behind, he will trample everything underfoot, browse everything bare … scoff at all of spring. And tell the Earth: don’t wake up … be a cold, icy, darkness-bound, hard, unfriendly rock. Be a dark home to the dead. Be a grave. And tell yourself (Fortune tells him): don’t breathe, don’t stir—he will guzzle your breath, break your movements. Crawl underground to gnaw the roots of hermits, crawl underwater, under the stone like a beetle …
Look, one had just crawled out from under a stone. Making straight for his eye. Horned, hairy on the belly and sides, weighed down by the hard plate glistening metallically on its insidious bent back. Moving awkwardly, clumsily, on long articulated legs—six all told, Melkior counted. The huge monster had filled the field of vision of his one eye (he has closed the other one).
Melkior did not blink.
The giant insect—an omnivore, a pantophage (as described by Edgar Allan Poe) was having trouble pushing through the thicket. It was hampered by its legs, its horns, it was pressed by the heavy armor of its backplate … but it had its eyes thrust exploringly forward, outside its head; it was pushing its greedy way to its target—Melkior’s eye.
Melkior did not blink.
Hear me, ghost … he launched into his speech at the last moment (it’s going to pierce my eye with its horn!), but the unstoppable insect had already covered all of his vision, snuffed the light out, blocked out the world. …
He’s shoved his stone in place as a plug, said Melkior and let his head drop helplessly to the Earth’s bosom: oh, Mother …
He heard a rumble deep below. The Earth trembled beneath him.
The rent, wounded Earth was groaning, his hooves tearing her flesh. “Here comes Polyphemus the Cyclops!”
And when he regained his sight … the sky was burning along the horizon.
Crackling stars were spewing fire from high above.
He heard the bellowing of frightened beasts in the distance.
“Zoopolis!” he said forlornly and an odd smile lit his face with insane glow. “The fortified city!”
“To make petals … in rags worn with dignity …” The body stirred by itself. The legs … the arms … he could no longer tell the difference … The uprightness of the pole—hello, Stoic—the dignity of the foot, the thumb, the index finger … Nothing. Four trotters, hooves, an earthbound life … on the Earth’s bosom …
He gave Earth a lover’s, fiery kiss.
The beasts once again put up a demented bellow: hey, what’s this? Over here! Help!
“Coming …” replied Melkior.
He nuzzled a leaf of grass, tenderly, first with his left cheek then with his right: we’ll never meet again, he’ll trample you, too; and to the ant he said: go underground, you wretch! He kissed Earth again—goodbye—and set off on all fours in the direction of the bellowing of the beasts—don’t shout, I’m coming—and he crawled fraternally into the frenzied city of Zoopolis.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Born on the island of Vis in 1913, Ranko Marinković attended high school in Split and Zagreb and earned his degree in psychology and pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1935. He briefly edited his own literary magazine, Dani i ljudi (Days and People), later joining Krleža on the journal Pečat (Stamp). Marinković’s first play, Albatros, was staged in 1939.
The Italians held Marinković prisoner at a camp in Ferramonte for two years during World War II. Then, after fleeing to Vis with many thousands of Dalmatian refugees after Italy capitulated, he and the other refugees were sent by the British, who were then with the Partisans on Vis, to El Shatt, Egypt, under British control, where he spent a year and resumed his writing.
As soon as the war was over, Marinković first worked for the Croatian Ministry of Education, then the Nakladni Zavod publishing house. He was director of the Croatian National Theater from 1946 to 1950, and in 1951 he became a professor at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art in 1951, where he taught until his retirement.
Marinković quickly made a name for himself as a short-story writer with the publication of his acclaimed book Ruke (The Hands) in 1953. Several of his short stories have appeared in anthologies in English translation, including the title story from the 1953 work, “The Hands” (in Death of a Simple Giant, 1965), “The Bone Stars” (in Yugoslav Short Stories, 1966), and “Badges of Rank” (in New Writing in Yugoslavia, 1970). When his play “Glorija” was premiered in 1955 at the Croatian National Theater, he was recognized as a leading playwright (“Gloria” in Five Modern Yugoslav Plays, 1977).
Cyclops was a best seller in 1965, making Marinković one of the leading writers of Yugoslavia.
He published another play, Inspektorove spletke, in 1977 (“The Inspector’s Intrigues,” Most/The Bridge, 1978) and two more novels subsequently, Zajednička kupka (Shared Bath, 1980) and Never More (1993), but these works did not enjoy the success that marked the reception of “Gloria” and Cyclops.
Ranko Marinković died in 2001.
Ellen Elias-Bursać has translated novels and nonfiction by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers for the past twenty years. Among the Croatian writers whose novels and essays she has translated are Slavenka Drakulić, Antun Šoljan, and Dubravka Ugrešić, and plays by Slobodan Šnajder and Miro Gavran, and poetry by Tin Ujević and Ivan Slamnig. She has also translated prose by David Albahari, Slobodan Selenić, and Karim Zaimović.
Her translations have appeared in periodicals and anthologies such as Best European Fiction 2010, Words Without Borders, Harper’s, Drawbridge, Two Lines, Context, Playboy, The Bridge/Most, Agni, Granta Online, and Leopard. With Ronelle Alexander she coauthored BCS: A Textbook for the Study of Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, which won the 2009 AATSEEL award for best work of language pedagogy. She has also published a monograph on poet Tin Ujević and his work as a literary translator.
Elias-Bursać is the rec
ipient of a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship. Her translation of David Albahari’s novel Gotz and Meyer was awarded the National Translation Award by the American Literary Translators Association in 2006.
Vlada Stojiljković (1939-2002) was a journalist, poet, prose writer, translator, and artist. He was born in Zagreb in 1938, attended elementary and secondary school in Niš, and earned his degree in English Language at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. He was a member of the Writers’ Association of Serbia and the Association of Applied Artists of Serbia. He started his career as a journalist at Radio Belgrade on its program for foreign countries, and spent most of his working life at the Radio Belgrade Children’s Program, where he also served as editor.
He is the author of eleven books for children and adults. He illustrated many of his books himself and also provided illustrations for the books of domestic and foreign children’s writers. He wrote ten radio plays for adults and nineteen for children, many of which won awards and several of which were performed abroad in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. He wrote more than eighty teleplays and several synopses for cartoons. He published his work in a number of children’s magazines and also exhibited his artwork. His writing has been included in anthologies of both adult and children’s poetry.
His poem collection Blok 39 was given two awards, and in 2001 he was given the Zmajeve Dečje Igre award for his exceptional contribution to literary expression for children. His fondest professional memories as a writer relate to his work on the children’s magazine Poletarac and collaboration with Duško Radović.
He translated many books from English, some of the most notable being Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell, Lassie Come Home by Eric Knight, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, Ubu Rides Again by Alfred Jarry, Pincher Martin by William Golding, Nonsense Songs by Edward Lear, and Monty Python Speaks by David Morgan. He was a member of the board of SIGNAL, an international review, and in the 1970s he was an active participant in the Signalist movement.
He died in Belgrade in 2002.
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