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Slobodan Novak (1924- )
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Slobodan Novak (1924– ) Slobodan Novak (to be distinguished from the literary historian and critic Slobodan Prosperov Novak) has produced a relatively small corpus of poetry, prose, drama, and radio plays, but his work is very highly regarded. His writings are intentionally unideological, despite his stint with the Partisans during World War II. He was deeply involved with the modernist journal Krugovi (Circles) starting in the 1950s. His novel Izgubljeni zavičaj (Lost Homeland, 1953), relates his childhood experiences on the Dalmatian island of Rab, where he was raised. A later novel, Mirisi, zlato i tamjan (1968, translated by Celia Hawkesworth as Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh in 1991), gave rise to both a film and a play. The following excerpt, translated by Graham McMaster, is taken from “In Our City There Lived an Emperor,” The Bridge 1–4 (1999): 265–67. 228 An Anthology of Croatian Literature In Our City There Lived an Emperor (Excerpt) There’s no emperor so wise as to know what an artist dare do. Even a Roman emperor. Even if the artist is a comb-and-paper blower. Not even an emperor from ancient times could know that people would eat well alongside his grave. In the ordinary called Behind the Mausoleum, a paupers’ canteen. Dead emperors exist in public because they think that an imperial death puts you off your food. And sleep. But an artist spent the night in the emperor’s sarcophagus . A comb-and-paper artist. At dawn he dragged himself, all bent, out of his couch, pulled an aluminium comb in a piece of paper from his cap and put down his cap for a moment at the foot of a granite pillar, and with his grey hair uncovered more sang with his soul than played a merry old song. To the beaming morning. To the women with their baskets of greens. To the beams that loomed from behind the stone frieze above his head. To the deceased emperor , the host. To the ignorant. Then he would quickly put his cap on and wait. He had one friend. Suri. “Easy does it, Roman. Morning!” Suri would cough under the imperial stairs. From dawn to night he had one friend. But he didn’t greet him first. Suri was the first to say hello in the evening too. “Easy does it, Roman, easy does it.” And the artist would be standing in his old man’s prankishness, small below the sphinx, pleased in the tepid morning and with always the same joy in waking, animated with the small joy of lasting living and unchanging duration . He took off his cap, but not to his friend. He spoke to the sphinx, or the stairs, or to the pillar, it doesn’t matter which, to the stone; he spoke with a voice gurgling from the night’s silence and from the dew: “I greet you, my imperial host, for these hard stones and this drop of swill, and take my cap off to you, just don’t look at my grey quill, for the comb’s my instrument, don’t take it ill.” Then he would jump on the staircase awkwardly rejuvenated, and as it were angry at his profane friend Suri: “Have respect, see, when an artist returns the emperor’s greetings.” Roman knew only of returning greetings. “Now, that’s the ticket. You greet the artist now. And learn and have respect, you Vlach, and don’t break the law, got it? The way you are, that’s what you are. As much man as imbecile. God did create you on the scale of the emperor ’s sarcophagus, and so you don’t understand these things.” Suri was a large, good-tempered fellow and he said: “Easy does it, Roman. Morning.” “God grant you the same, mate.” The friends thus meet in the emperor’s vestibule. Fellow travelers. Decrepit . They meet the dawn and depart. The dead city behind their backs and under their legs. A long life on their shoulders and in their feet. They go [44.223.31.148] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:36 GMT) Slobodan Novak 229 among the palms, where the gulls grimace under the sun They go down the sloping pavement slowly. Roman up to Suri’s shoulder. Suri small beside the artist and emperor. And they sit on the stone wall near the sea. Indistinguishable in age. Roman and Suri. They sit for a long time. “You’re a layabout,” says Suri pensively. “You...