The Five Wonders of the Danube

by Zoran Živković, Youchan Ito (Illustrator), Alice Copple-Tošić (Translator)

On five bridges over the Danube, five strange and remarkable tales are tales of the sacrifices that are made for Art. For the painter, the sculptor, the writer and the composer, creation is inextricably entwined with violence, suffering and the darkest reaches of the psyche, and the bridge to enlightenment is the hardest of all to cross. Yet through the innocence of a dog all can be redeemed, in the miraculous climax of this complex and exotic fable. Perhaps his finest work to date, The Five Wonders of the Danube is another of his famous “mosaic” novels, cleverly weaving multiple narrative threads into a tapestry of surrealism, reaching a magnificent conclusion in the final tale. Readers eager for more of his unique stories, combining simplicity of language and structure with thought-provoking explorations of life and death and reality will reread this one again and again. Long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2013.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

198 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

About the author

Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his master's degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982 from the same school. He lives in Belgrade, Serbia, with his wife Mia, who is French, and their twin sons Uroš and Andreja. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology. He's received plenty of awards, one of them being the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella (The Library, 2003).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Celebrate!

A novel to take your breath away.

Similar to a number of Zoran Živković's shorter fictions, The Five Wonders of the Danube is a “mosaic," that is, a series of seemingly freestanding stories brought together into a cohesive whole in the final chapter.

And what a novel. A fabulist’s sensibility combined with simplicity, clarity and charm, a work of impossible magic that lives at the midpoint between Italo Calvino and Roald Dahl. There’s good reason why a reader will encounter a sense of wonder many times over.

To share glimpses of Zoran Živković's wizardry in action, I’ll shift to the five tales themselves:

First Wonder: Black Bridge, Regensburg: Early one rainy Sunday morning, the guard assigned to the bridge spots a large painting mysteriously fastened to the bridge itself. Soon thereafter, a string of higher-ups come on the scene. A series of questions are posed: Who put such a painting up on the bridge? And how and why was such a feat accomplished? This striking tale opens up many philosophical issues centered around the nature of art, as per the following quartet:

Site-specific art is a work created to exist in one and only one locale. The painting fastened to the bridge most certainly qualifies as such a case. The bridge authorities, the police and other organizations send teams of men up on ladders to remove the painting, but without success. After much effort, there’s a recognition that the only place where this large painting can exist as an artwork is its current spot up on the bridge. It doesn’t appear any of the men or women (yes, a young lady with long blonde hair from Military Security pops up - nice touch, Zoran!) are aware of the nature of site-specific art but whether they know it or not, that's precisely what this painting is.

The bridge guard’s first survey of the painting; “The painting seemed to invoke this very moment, an impression that was reinforced by the flock of river gulls flying in all directions. They were depicted so faithfully that it seemed the shrieking was coming from the painting too.” The exact merging of painting with background echoes those works of surrealist René Magritte. Yet this is only the painting on first viewing – with subsequent viewings by the guard and others, as if by strokes of alchemy, the painting’s subject changes, depicting the bridges featured in the novel’s future chapters.

Critical theorist Walter Benjamin speaks of an artwork’s “aura” – a force arising from the work's uniqueness. Each of the officials is struck by the painting’s quality and recognizes the value of viewing such an original painting versus the reproductions they currently live with. In keeping with our modern world’s stress on art linked with economics, these same officials also see the painting as a potential cash cow. Thus the ongoing conflict of objective aesthetic experience on one side and self-interest and ownership on the other.

As a kind of grand finale, the sea gulls that have been inserting themselves into the scene periodically throughout the morning take a predominant part in revealing the truer nature of the distinctive bridge painting. One way of interpreting this performance (ah, a work of performance art, after all!) is to gauge how we view the painting at different points as we continue reading. Remarkably, via the storyteller’s craft, the painting on the bridge of Regensburg metamorphoses in extraordinary ways following an encounter with all the various images and happenings in each ensuing chapter, from the Yellow Bridge in Vienna to the Blue Bridge in Novi Sad.

Second Wonder: Yellow Bridge, Vienna: Five people are crossing the bridge – two going left, three to the right. Although they are spread out and each one is unaware of the others, all five suddenly come to a complete stop. The halting lasts but a moment and all five resume their crossing. Why?

We follow the events preceding the bridge incident where we discover each of the five individuals – a theater prompter, a hit man, a prostitute, a book thief and a nun – has a brush with the fantastic and surreal. To take but one example, the hit man observes a chess game taking place on the bridge where a man playing black has regular black pieces but he’s playing against sixteen ruby-eyed white mice standing on their hind legs on various squares, each wearing little white coats with the name of the piece written in black letters on the back while the king and queen don yellow crowns.

Third Wonder: Red Bridge, Bratislava: For two homeless men, Issac and Fyodor, literature and the arts take center stage: Issac carves small figures in wood and Fyodor reads the novels of Dostoyevsky as well as penning his own manuscript. And when the fire of inspiration unites with a living fire, there’s a transformation nothing short of miraculous, bestowing expanded meaning to the words of Mikhail Bulgakov that “manuscripts don’t burn.”

Fourth Wonder: White Bridge, Budapest: An elderly gentleman, a famous composer and conductor, is on the bridge and reflects back on a particular incident years ago involving a young girl and suicide. The story winds through his memory of the past until he is overcome by a feeling of ecstasy in the present moment where “Nothing was more important right now than the music he was finally receiving without a sacrifice in return. He gave himself over completely to listening.” Without sacrifice? The White Bridge of Budapest assumes the role of teacher to provide him with a deeper comprehension of the profound connection between sacrifice and bliss.

Fifth Wonder: Blue Bridge, Novi Sad: Zoran Živković provides his own unique twist on that famous Zen koan: Does a dog have the Buddha nature? Like the Danube itself, this concluding chapter flows through Regensburg, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Novi Sad to capture images and motifs catapulting the tale to worlds beyond, even to the chimerical kingdom of authorial vision. What do I mean by that? You will have to read for yourself to find out.


Serbian author Zoran Živkovic, born 1948

[Katherine Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Zoran Živković is like reading the experience of a surrealist painting. At first it feels familiar, but everyday objects and experiences take on an almost mystical quality with his brilliant writing. I've never read an author who so carefully draws the connections and patterns and symbols together from one short story to the next. Interwoven is such a tapestry, they form a beautiful vision together. His analogies are ones that are deep and penetrating, but also start to make you question the world around you. What is reality? What is absurd? Do we really know the difference? This is kind of book I like to savor by a warm fire and just soak in each page. Enjoy!

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do I even start to describe this book other than I LOVED every page of it?

It’s five strange, mystical and often dark tales woven carefully together by Zoran Živković to illustrate “ the sacrifices that are made for Art”.
The stories themselves often take on the dreamlike absurdist quality of surrealist paintings, especially the first story where a huge painting appears mysteriously on the Black Bridge in Regensburg and flocks of seagulls become an important character.

Out of the five stories, my favourite is “Third wonder: Red Bridge, Bratislava”.
In this short story, two homeless guys form a touching camaraderie by their mutual appreciation of art. they are : Isaac who makes figurines which he lets float down the Danube and Fyodor, whose sole possessions are six novels by Dostoevsky and who is also working on a manuscript of his own.
When the harsh winter nights hit and they find themselves unable to find anything to keep them warm, they resort to burning the books…and the manuscript. However, instead of destruction, something miraculous happens.
I also love how when Isaac is considering breaking the law to land himself in a warm jail cell, he soon rejects the idea by telling himself “Someone who reads Dostoevsky might become homeless but not a lawbreaker”.

I also really loved the last story :” Fifth Wonder: Blue Bridge, Novi Sad”, where all the characters and stories in the previous tales connect through a dog’s journey through the Danube. This is the most whimsical of the five stories and if I have to describe it, I would say the reading experience of the last story is reminiscent of what you might feel looking at Marc Chagall paintings.

This is the first book of Živković’s that I have read, and it has been such a joy to read him.
I liked it so much that midway through my reading of The Five Wonders of the Danube, I ordered two more of his books.
I am reading The Library now, it’s a slim book of six short stories, and it is just as good!

[Akylina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translated into English by Alice Copple-Tošić and published by Cadmus Press, The Five Wonders of Danube consists of five chapters, each one taking place in or around a different bridge of the Danube river.

Although each story has a different set of characters and appears separate from all the others, they all very cleverly come together at the end. All five stories have surreal and often absurd elements that make Živković’s prose so interesting and unique. Apart from an academic, the author is also an art enthusiast, something which is apparent in all of the stories.

For example, in the first story, titled ‘First Wonder: Black Bridge, Regensburg’, an enormous painting mysteriously and unexplainably appears on the Black Bridge, causing a big uproar since the passersby and the police alike are trying to solve the mystery of how it got hung up there without anyone noticing a thing.

In ‘Second Wonder: Yellow Bridge, Vienna’, the longest story of the bunch, five unconnected people are going their own ways on the bridge, when they happen to stop short on their tracks at exactly the same time. Two artistic homeless people are the stars of the ‘Third Wonder: Red Bridge, Bratislava’, my personal favourite of the stories. One of them is an avid Dostoyevski reader and an aspiring writer himself, while the other one adeptly carves figures out of wood, when the fire of their inspiration turns into an actual fire that engulfs their minimal belongings.

In ‘Fourth Wonder: White Bridge, Budapest’, a famous composer looks back on the incidents that have led him to write his most acclaimed masterpieces, and very shockingly realises that death eerily plays a big part in his creative process (not in the way that you might think, though). Lastly, the ‘Fifth Wonder: Blue Bridge, Novi Sad’, is perhaps the strangest and most surreal out of all the stories, but it ties some loose ends together and sort of makes a full circle back to the first story.

While Živković might deal with some rather heavy themes such as suicide, homelessness and death, his writing style is infused with such wit and clever humour that it becomes a fun and whimsical reading experience that truly makes the reader ponder.

The surreal elements might sometimes get a bit overwhelming for those who are not very familiar with reading such stories steeped in the absurd, as many things do not make much sense until later on in the book. What I personally loved was how the bridges turned into a (sometimes metaphorical) portal of some sort, where things (the painting in the first story) and even people (the characters in the second story) are transported almost magically. Unexplained and absurd things take place on those bridges, turning Danube and its banks into a liminal space of wonder where everything is possible although eerily unexplainable.

My first contact with Živković’s work was definitely a very pleasant one and I’m very much looking forward to experiencing more of his works. In my opinion, The Five Wonders of Danube is a great introduction to his whimsical writing, and I do hope more people get to discover the magic quality of his pen.

You can also read my review over at The Literary Sisters.

A copy of this book was very kindly provided to me by the publisher, Cadmus Press.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I did not really like this. Maybe it was the high expectations combined with the short-story format. I've only heard good things about Zoran Živković, and I really enjoyed the first story, so I sort of thought it'd only get better from there... it didn't for me. The first one was a lot of fun, mysterious and interesting with enjoyable characters, but I found the second one pointless and confusing (and it bothered me a bit because I really can't imagine any woman (and a NUN, but even if she wasn't) would enjoy a strange man putting a hand on her knee in a cinema. Though I should be fair and say that that story had the greatest twisted-dream-like quality of all of them, so perhaps that can serve as the explanation). The third one was okay, the fourth one interesting but I was annoyed by the protagonist, and the fifth one I didn't particularly enjoy because I found it too weird (not a bad thing, just wasn't my cup of tea here), although I applaud him for having a dog protagonist (though I still didn't think much of the characterization, so). I feel a bit guilty because I can't really pinpoint what I didn't like, and I'm glad he's such a widely respected author from these parts. I'd like to give his novels a chance. I read that he was hired to write this, so maybe I'd enjoy his more 'natural' books better.

[Mark Lisac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sucked in once again by positive reviews and an author's high international reputation. The book felt flat and opaque. Neither the story nor the simple prose did much for me. I may not have appreciated it fully, but if you need the description on the back cover to explain it to you … Mostly I started thinking how Saramago could explore the same territory of fables just outside the bounds of reality with far deeper emotional impact, a much clearer sense of meaning, and much greater density and texture in the writing. There was just enough in it that I may take this as a swing-and-miss and give another Zivkovic a try someday, but not soon.