Animalism and the Renaissance

There is no doubt that animal lovers, especially cats, will read the new novel by Osijek writer Ivan Zrinušić with excitement. Because everything is there. Love at first sight, passion, dating, existential questions, disappointment, illness, pain, despair, redemption... However, what about those who (like the signatories of these lines) are indifferent to animals (except when they are afraid of them), a little disgusted by them, and are only interested in these animals as a political problem? Nothing really. Animal lovers will enjoy the story of a sick cat and his two-legged friend who tries with all his might to save him, while the latter will enjoy Zrinušić's writing, his well-measured sentences and displaced storytelling perspective.

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In his first novel More beautiful from afar ("Vreme" no. 1635) Ivan Zrinušić sent off the self-ironic voice of the hero who, with every attempt to do something with his own life, falls lower and lower on the ladder of self-esteem. The main two-legged character of Zrinušić's new novel is somewhat similar to his predecessor, he lives in a bubble between indifference and disappointment, he is not a complete loser, but he is far from someone who feels good in his so-called life, and irony, self-irony and solid amounts of alcohol help him not to slide to the very bottom of self-pity (although he is on the right path). Having, first of all, left Osijek in the direction of the whole world - where he managed quite well, but twenty years later his cursed indifference towards everything, and mainly towards himself, brought him back to his initial settings - now we find Neven on his way to his native Osijek, where he will rent a house and gently continue to nurture his indifference. And everything would have been beautiful, he and his indifference would have taken each other and lived indifferently with each other, if a chubby, yellow and red-nosed cat had not appeared in the rented house (hence Rudolph). From that moment on, a plot begins that deserves attention in every way - both for animal lovers and for literature lovers.

Neven himself, actually, does not understand what is happening because there is hardly any room for himself in his coordinate system, but he suddenly becomes very interested in the wiry cat. At the same time, he knows nothing about cats (but that's why he's full of prejudices), which puts him in a whole series of comical situations: he doesn't know how to deal with a four-legged friend, he has no idea what cats eat, he doesn't know what props an animal that lives in the house needs, he endures reproachful looks from experienced cat lovers (how is it possible that he doesn't know how to handle cats?). However, as interest in the cat grows, Neven notices that people are getting more and more boring to him. Except for the attractive student Tee.

In the beginning, the relationship between the biped and the quadruped develops as it is expected of them: the biped learns about the quadruped, and the quadruped becomes more tame, more nourished and stronger. Until he starts whining, his appetite weakens and he loses weight. Veterinary tests begin, and as we get closer to discovering the cause of the cat's illness, the tone of the story changes. Self-irony and distance from reality is replaced by concern accompanied by astonishment and confusion (where does such concern for the cat come from?), and the technical tone - precise data on the cat's disease, results of veterinary examinations, obsessive reading of texts about the disease, treatment of the animal - as a kind of transition from a carefree life to a life filled with anxiety, fills the holes left behind by indifference. We should dwell on this detail. Those who love animals and socialize with them will not find anything strange in the technical details, veterinary jargon and, for example, the impatient interpretation of the results of blood tests - animals also get sick, suffer, heal themselves - while lovers of literature, and especially those who have read Zrinušić's previous novel, will recognize in this process a departure from straightforward storytelling and a kind of depathetization of the atmosphere that is woven from Rudolf's suffering and Neven's devotion. In fact, the entire veterinary arsenal humanizes the relationship between bipeds and quadrupeds. That relationship becomes - how to say it differently? - human, except that it is not and cannot be. And that, in fact, is the constitutive paradox of this novel, at least from the point of view of the reader who is not interested in animals. Cat lovers, again, will not see any problem here: of course, a two-legged person will invest all his humanity in his relationship with his beloved four-legged friend. In the second conceptual regime: the animal is subjectivized, it becomes a (four-legged) person. Marigold discovers humanity in the place occupied by the animal. Everything that revolves around the animal, including the deep emotional involvement, the suffering of both animals and people (as if the cat were a child, for example), is justified in literature to such an extent that the difference between the reader's perspectives is simply lost.

But that's not all. Neven's relationship with the cat humanizes him (tames him, so to speak), and changes his relationship with people. Zrinušić, however, is too good a writer to meet readers' expectations. He does not solve a (literary) crossword puzzle in which he fills in the blanks with the text provided in advance, so that, in the end, a meaningless whole appears (and ends up in the trash). The writer follows the events and writes them down, and how the bipeds will manage in all this is none of his business. To that extent, the character of the student Tee, with her distance from reality, brings a new imbalance to the already dislocated life of Neven. Let's note that for Neven, she is just as unknown as the cat, only now the omens are changing: in the relationship with the animal, there are no assumptions, so that relationship is built and learned, while the relationship between bipeds rests on layers of assumptions, but mutual understanding does not occur. The outcome of that relationship was not expected. In fact, the writer does not try with words, images or imagination to bridge, perhaps even replace, what remains cloudy and elusive in the relationship between bipeds. Therefore, the reader is left to complete the story.

With his second novel, Zrinušić confirmed that his debut was not a coincidence, which means that the stakes and expectations from the writer from Osijek are even higher now.