FAMOUS CROATS 2013 - RANKO MARINKOVIĆ

RANKO MARINKOVIĆ (1913 – 2001)
 
From his very beginnings in literature, accepted before the Second World War as the author of particular literary skill and sensibility, Ranko Marinković asserted himself in the second half of the 20^th century as the key personality in Croatian literature, a writer of explicit critical vocation, interested in contemporary topics, but also a creator of strong intellectual reflection – ready for the challenges of radical modernism and open to probations of postmodern relativism. He tried almost all genres and proved his creativity as an exceptional story teller, novel writer, dramatist, critic and essayist.
Born in Vis on 22 February 1913, he deeply inhaled the atmosphere of his Mediterranean island ambience, but even more, recognised peculiar, interesting characters and conflict situations of small, closed provincial milieus. Inspired by the sequences of his native microcosms and presented by a mixture of empathy and caricature, subtlety and grotesque, there appeared his early works: drama Albatros (Albatross, staged in 1939) and the whole series of novellas gathered in a representative book entitled Proze (Proses, published in 1948). His dense narrative opus was epochally supplemented by the issue of a short story collection Ruke (Hands, 1953) which puts the writer in the first plan of the then actual liberation from the so far prevailing realistic conventions and the poster-type social engagement. Especially programmatically complete is his short story Zagrljaj (Embrace), as a kind of with anecdote and vivid dialogues equipped discussion on the relation between  writing and living, on unbreakable connections  with the repressive reality and on endless reflecting, plunging and  mutual  absorbing of excited presentations.
 
With the performance of his miracle Glorija (Gloria, 1955) Marinković introduced a new tone, a problematic level that builds on Pirandello type of experience but also on the possibilities of multimedia and especially film. The drama protagonist, the woman equilibrist who becomes a nun, continuously torn between the circus and the church, fells victim to dictatorship of imposed discipline of opposed repressive systems, and her fate is understood as condemnation or diagnosis of the destructiveness of all totalitarian systems.       
His monumental novel Kiklop (Cyclops1965) is a social fresco of the 30-ties of the last century and a psychological vivisection of the fear from war which assumes mythical dimensions. Situated in the developed urban ambience of the pre-war Zagreb, with picturesque and witty presentation of a number o bohemian and military figures and scenes, this novel confirmed huge writer's potential, the ability to come out of the spellbound cycle of island plots and phantasies and surpass the limitation of smaller prose forms and, finally, to synthesise all the achievements of his humanism and humourism.
At his late age Marinković once again proved his talent  in another two distinguished  novelistic endeavours: Zajednička kupka (Joint  Bath,1980) and  Never more (1993), as well as in  two other original drama texts: the farce Politeia or  Inspektorove spletke (Inspector's Intrigues, 1977) and the sotie Pustinja (Desert, 1982). In his book of essays Nevesele oči klauna (Said Clown's Eyes 1986) he did not offer his own complete poetics or theory but he proved himself as one of the most thoughtful and stylistically most demanding Croatian writers in general.
He died in Zagreb on 20 January 2001. We can accompany the stamp issue with his figure - with some suitable irony - by citing the first sentence from his novella Balkon (Balcony): „Oh, philately, philately…“
 
 
                                                                                                                      Tonko Maroević