Forrester, Sibelan E.S.

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Swarthmore College Works Russian Faculty Works Russian Fall 2011 Review Of "Cyclops" By R. Marinković, Translated By V. Stojiljković Sibelan E.S. Forrester Swarthmore College, sforres1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in Russian Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-russian  Part of the Slavic Languages and Societies Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Sibelan E.S. Forrester. (2011). "Review Of "Cyclops" By R. Marinković, Translated By V. Stojiljković". Slavic And East European Journal. Volume 55, Issue 3. 485-486. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-russian/22 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages ReviewAuthor(s): Sibelan ForresterReview by: Sibelan ForresterSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3 (FALL 2011), pp. 485-486Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23349232Accessed: 06-04-2016 19:24 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusteddigital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information aboutJSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages is collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavic and East European JournalThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 19:24:32 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Reviews 485 phrases. The Zapolje doctor warns Kacur against "flip-flopping," another contemporary deems Kacur a "geek," and Cox has him using the term "goof-ball" in a conversation with his wife. Similarly, to imagine a nineteenth-century Slovene intellectual telling a friend "it is what it is" strains credulity. On the other hand, this is often the most difficult question for a translator: how should a nineteenth-century Slovene, or Russian, or Pole address twenty-first-century readers, so as to keep them engaged and determined to read on? In the main, Cox has arrived at a work able compromise overall. Martin Kacur is a great achievement, a gift to culturally savvy, but linguistically challenged speakers of English. It has given voice to a multi-faceted Slovene writer in a world in which he was heretofore unknown. One hopes that Cox and other gifted historians and linguists will pro duce many more translations from Cankar and other talented East European writers in the com ing years. Brigit Farley, Washington State University— Tri-cities Ranko Marinkovic. Cyclops. Trans. Vlada Stojiljkovic. Ed. Ellen Elias-Bursac. A Margellos World Republic of Letters book. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2010. xi + 553 pp. $35.00 (cloth; e-book). This is the first translation of Ranko Marinkovic's Modernist novel Kiklop [1965] into English, but it is worth the long wait. The volume emerges from the happy confluence of a new series of translations of international literature, a richly creative rendition into English by Vlada Sto jiljkovic, and careful editorial intervention by Ellen Elias-Bursac. Marinkovic (1913-2001) was well known as a poet and dramatic author; Cyclops was his masterpiece, a largely autobiograph ical treatment of the eve of World War If, as the war raging in other parts of Europe moved in exorably closer to royal Yugoslavia. The novel's plot is filtered through and largely motivated by the consciousness of its protag onist, Melkior Tresic, a theater critic and intellectual born in Dalmatia but now living in Zagreb. Melkior is a Rodion Raskolnikov without the murder plot, half Leopold Bloom and half Under ground Man, a flaneur who carries on mental conversations with authors he has read, constantly buttonholed and mortified by loquacious friends and strangers, preoccupied with art and sex. Melkior starves himself in hopes of evading the draft and dreads his army summons, which does not arrive until page 335. This novel's length puts it in Russian company, and it frequently refers to Dostoevsky as well as Gogol and Tolstoy, plus other world authors from Cervantes and Shakespeare through Dickens into the novel's present: Melkior's brief experience of army ser vice evokes Krleza, Hasek, and Heller. His thoughts are a tissue of literary allusions, and for eign words (Arabic, English, French, German, Latin, etc.) are sprinkled throughout the text. Melkior undergoes periods of very persuasively described madness (a camouflage of pretense, or a genuine psychological disintegration?), while other characters attempt to brainwash or ma nipulate him for their own mysterious purposes. The city of Zagreb, with its monuments, adver tisements and popular culture, surfaces regularly from Melkior's imagination to set the scene. Translating Marinkovic's richly ornamental, stylistically inventive text demands great lin guistic virtuosity, and Stojiljkovic rises to the task. (Translator of numerous important works from English into Serbian, he died in 2002, one year after Marinkovic.) The translation comes strikingly close to the original text's brilliance and verbal density. In some passages the trans lator could not convey the richness of the original, for example in this evocation of the city tram's sounds: "Vozi, vozi... jedan tram, jedam vaj, tram-tram... vaj-vaj tram-vaj, na krovu mu lira svira vaj, a tockovi udaraju tram-tram," with its dense onomatopoeia and the internal rhyme "lira svira," is rendered in a more pedestrian way as "Rolling on, rolling on... one tram,This content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 19:24:32 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 486 Slavic and East European Journal one way, tram-tram... bus bus trambus, the lyre on the roof thrumming way, the wheels drum ming tram-tram" (275). English does not use "tramway" for tramvaj; moreover, the English "way" cannot evoke the associations of the fragment "vaj," so close in sound to avaj, 'alas.' In other places, the English emerges as richer than the original: "Tu nas cijelu vecer proucavate kao doktor-psihiatar neke male kretencice! [You've been studying us all evening like a psychi atrist [studying] some little morons!]" becomes "You've been studying us all night like a shrink with a pack of pickled peckers!" (59); the "pack of pickled peckers" evokes at once a crowd of randy drunks and English folklore (Peter Piper), and it suits the vulgar verbal creativ ity of the speaker, Melkior's difficult friend Ugo. Occasionally the equivalent is a gift, as in the formation "Ugo-tistical." Sometimes the translation is equal to the original in its brilliance despite the difficulties. "Aon je isao uz nju kao »drugo lice« u paradi, prinz-gemahl, lazni car, lazni car, papu-car, dimnja-car, sav crn i nedostojan" [literally: But he walked beside her like the 'second person' in a parade, a Prinz-gemahl, a false tsar, a false charm, a slipper-maker, a chimney-sweep, all black and unworthy] is wonderfully rendered by Stojiljkovic: "And he walked at her side like a 'secondary personage' in a parade, the royal consort, a self-styled king, cuckoo-king, thin-king, sin-king, sunk in glom and indignity" (269). There are only oc casional errors (as when "A raditi, doista... I zaboravio je da moramo raditi... obojica" has its person shifted in "Oh, to work... I forgot we have work to do... the both of us," though the orig inal makes clear that the sinister fortune teller Mr. Adam is referring to Melkior in the third person, 84). On balance, the translation is truly adequate, showing how language not only me diates experience but creates it. Elias-Bursac, an award-winning translator in her own right who edited Stojiljkovic's transla tion, contributes an informative and enjoyable introduction that sets the novel nicely in the con text of its time and traces its roots in the literature and culture of Croatia and socialist Yu goslavia, its sources in writers like Miroslav Krleza or the larger-than-life persona of poet Tin Ujevic, as well as its impact and significance from the mid-1960s on. Elias-Bursac has edited the translation with great tact, preserving the imprint of Stojiljkovic's personality. The text con veys the richness of the original and the inventiveness of the translation without jarring depar tures from English style; when a word choice draws the reader up short, it is meant to. The pro duction is of high quality as well, with a trifling number of typographical errors for a long novel roiling with foreign words ("wretch" should be "retch," 197.) This is a wonderful book and should make Marinkovic better known. Its handsome cover and reasonable price may well draw the attention of students of Modernism and twentieth-century comparative literature, and it should be recommended to libraries as well as scholars. Sibelan Forrester, Swarthmore College Gabriela Zapolska. The Morality of Mrs. Dulska. Trans. Teresa Murjas. Chicago: Intellect Books / U of Chicago P, 2007. Illustrations, lxxxviii + 100 pp. $25.00 (paper). Gabriela Zapolska (1857-1921), the pseudonym of Maria Gabriela Stefania Korwin Piotrowska, was an actress, dramatist, and short story writer. Together with Eliza Orzeszkowa, Zapolska represents the small but vigorous face of women's writing present during the artistic movement now generally known as Mloda Polska. The author of some thirty performance texts, Zapolska published her first short story in 1881. Her first collection, Akwarele [Watercolors], appeared in 1885, but was met coldly by conservative critics. The Morality of Mrs. Dulska [Moralnosc Pani Dulskiej], Zapolska's classic naturalist comedy written in 1906, remains the most popular of her plays and a staple of the Polish stage. In fact, the behavior of the character Pani Dulska spoke so strongly to the public that it engendered the pejorative term "dulThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 19:24:32 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Review Of  Cyclops  By R. Marinković, Translated By V. Stojiljković

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Review Of Cyclops By R. Marinković, Translated By V. Stojiljković

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