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Ivo Andric: Bridge between East and West

Ivo Andric photograph by Radoslav Grujic

Ivo Andric: Bridgebetween East and West

Celia Hawkesworth

THE ATHLONE PRESSLondon and Dover N. H.

First published 1984 by The Athlone Press Ltd44 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4LYand 51 Washington Street Dover, N. H. 03820, USA

© Celia Hawkesworth 1984

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataHawkesworth, Celia

Ivo Andric.1. Andric, Ivo - Criticism and interpretationI. Title891.8'235 PG1418.A6Z/

ISBN 0-485-11255-8

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataHawkesworth, Celia, 1942-

Ivo Andric: bridge between East and WestBibliography: p.Includes index.1. Andric, Ivo, 1892-1975—Criticism and interpretation.I. Title.PG1418.A6Z69 1984 891.8'235 84-9186

ISBN 0-485-11255-8

Published with the help of The Ivo Andric Foundation

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writingfrom the publisher.

Printed in Yugoslavia

Foreword

The works of Ivo Andric may be read in numerous languages, fromItalian and Finnish to Japanese. In Europe the first translationsappeared in Czech and French in 1919. Since then Andric hasbecome best known in Poland and Germany, where virtually all hisworks have been published.

The first work to be translated into English was Bosnian Storywhich appeared in 1958, translated by Kenneth Johnstone. After theaward of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961 several more worksappeared in English, both in Britain and the United States, and theyhave continued to be published intermittently ever since. Neverthe-less, Andric has remained relatively neglected in the English-speaking world, known for the most part only to those involved inSlavonic studies. Several scholarly articles have appeared in English,but these are accessible only to the narrow readership familiar withAndric's writing in the original.

The present work is an attempt to introduce Andric to the moregeneral reader. It assumes no knowledge of the writer andendeavours to offer a comprehensive survey of his work. To thisend, Andric has been left as far as possible to "speak for himself". Itis to be hoped that new editions of Andric's works in English maylead to a revival of interest in this important European writer. Theway would then be open for the publication of more narrowly basedcritical studies.

All the passages quoted in this volume have been translated by theauthor in order to ensure consistency of tone. A list of existingtranslations into English is given in the Select Bibliography. Thetitles of published translations have been retained, in the text, forease of identification.

For Nada Prodanovic-Curcija andin memory of Mira Rotter,

with whom it all began.

Contents

Foreword v

Acknowledgements viii

Note on the Pronunciation of Serbo-Croatian Names ix

1 Introduction 1

2 Verse 51

3 Short Stories 68

4 The Novels 123

5 Devil's Yard 189

6 Essays and Reflective Prose 206

7 Conclusion 234

Notes 250

Select Bibliography 261

Index 269

Acknowledgements

This work could not have been written without the invaluable adviceof many friends and colleagues both in Yugoslavia and Britain whohave found the time and the patience to read the manuscript inwhole or in part. I am particularly grateful to Professor SvetozarKoljevic of the University of Sarajevo, Dr Vladeta Jankovic of theUniversity of Belgrade, Dr Predrag Palavestra of the SerbianAcademy of Sciences and Arts, Dr E. D. Goy of the University ofCambridge, Mr Dusan Puvacic of the University of Lancaster andDr Robert Pynsent of the School of Slavonic and East EuropeanStudies, University of London. My thanks are also due to DrMichael Branch, Director of SSEES, for his personal encourage-ment, and to the School's Publications Committee for their support.I am grateful also to SSEES for granting me a period of study leavein the early stages of the work, and to the British Academy forenabling me to spend some time in Yugoslavia. Above all, I amindebted to the Andric Foundation in Belgrade, whose staff havebeen an unfailing source of encouragement, support and concreteassistance. I am particularly grateful to Mr Miodrag Perisic for all hiswilling and energetic help and to Vera Stojic, who worked closelywith Andric for many years, for her advice. A generous grant fromthe Foundation has made it possible for the work to be printed inYugoslavia. I am grateful to Radovan Popovic and Miroslav Kar-aulac for permission to use material from their works in thebiographical section of my introduction. Finally, the work could nothave been completed without the patient help of Mrs Jeanne Clissoldin typing sections of the manuscript and of my family in simplybeing there.

Note on the Pronunciation ofSerbo-Croatian Names

With the exception of some Turkish words and names (e.g. Cem, theyounger son of Sultan Bayazid II, whose story is told in Devil'sYard), Serbo-Croatian spellings have been retained. The languagemay be written in either the Cyrillic or the Latin alphabet. The Latinalphabet includes a number of unfamiliar letters listed below.Serbo-Croat is strictly phonetic, with one letter designating onesound. The stress normally falls on the first syllable, never on thelast.

c - ts, as in carsc - ch, as in churchc - tj, close to c, but softer i.e. t in future

dz - j, as in just d - dj, close to dz, but softer i.e. d in verdurej - y, as in yellow (Jugoslavija)s - sh, as in shipz - zh, as s in treasure

dz-j,as in just

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1Introduction

Andric and Bosnia: the source and the spirit of a life work

The work of Ivo Andric is deeply rooted in his native culture: byconcentrating on what is most characteristic, most significant andcreative in his own immediate surroundings, Andric seeks to identifywhat is most universal. To the outsider this setting may seemobscure, remote and exotic, and it has often proved difficult topenetrate beyond this initial impression. Because of its unfamiliar-ity, the aroma of the East that fills so many of Andric's pages hastended to dominate our reading. Andric's work arises out of acollision of cultures particular to his birthplace, the rugged Balkanregion of Bosnia. Bosnia is probably chiefly known abroad for itscapital city, Sarajevo, and the assassination there in 1914 of theAustrian Crown Prince Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, which was theimmediate cause of the outbreak of the First World War. Born in1892, Andric was a product of the atmosphere prevailing in CentralEurope at the turn of the century; his work is rooted in Bosnia, inthis otherwise obscure corner of Europe, meeting-place of East andWest, where for so long the Ottoman Empire confronted theHabsburg Monarchy. For West Europeans, whose attitude to "TheTurk" was for centuries hostile, Andric represents one of thebrightest aspects of this meeting in his positive fusion of features ofeach culture. His experience led directly to the emergence of one ofthe most important symbols of his work: the bridge. The phrase"meeting-place of East and West" may be felt to have become acliche with regard to the Balkans, but the concept applies uniquelyto Bosnia for particular historical reasons. And it is only out of thisexceptional coincidence of cultures that Andric's blend of Europeanand Oriental attitudes could have grown.

What makes the territory of Bosnia unique in the whole of

2 Ivo Andric: Bridge between East and West

erstwhile Turkey-in-Europe is the size of its Moslem population.There are well over a million Moslems in Yugoslavia, and most ofthem are in Bosnia and the neighbouring region of Hercegovina.Despite the fact that they used to call themselves "Turks" - and this isconsistently reflected in the work of Andric - they were so only inreligious allegiance. The only actual Turks in Bosnia throughout itshistory were the handful of administrators appointed from Istanbul.And even then, the nature of the Ottoman Empire meant that these"Turks" could well have belonged to any of the subject races, many ofwhose members were taken at an early age from their homelands andbrought up in the Ottoman capital, bound to no ethnic group but tothe Sultan alone. The large Bosnian Moslem population is Slav andspeaks the same Serbo-Croatian language as its Christian brethren.

Most of the lands of Ottoman Europe consisted of an indigenousrural Christian subject people, administered by Turkish officials andsoldiers living in towns. In Bosnia, however, there was a nativeMoslem ruling class - the Beys - and a large rural population ofconverts. The Beys were landowners, either representatives of theold feudal nobility or adherents of the Bogomil heresy who hadpreserved their lands and property and their old way of life byexchanging one religion and one sovereign for another. The Vizier,appointed from Istanbul, with his residence at various times in eitherBanja Luka or Travnik, represented the Emperor, but his influenceover the powerful Beys was limited - to the extent that he was barelyallowed into the town of Sarajevo. It was always the policy of theOttoman conquerors that those of the subject people who werewilling to accept Islam should be permitted to retain their property,but the exceptionally widespread and profound conversion that tookplace in Bosnia was the result of the particular circumstancesprevailing there before the conquest. It is generally accepted that themain factor was the widely established Bogomil heresy, whichspread from Bulgaria through Macedonia, persecuted by the earlyChristian churches there, but welcomed when it reached Bosnia. Itwas a form of dualism, influenced by the Massalian and Paulicianheresies of Asia Minor and closely related to the Albigensian heresy.When it began to gain a hold in Bosnia, in the late twelfth century, ithad been modified so that it appealed to the ruling class and thepeasantry alike. It soon acquired its own hierarchical organization

Introduction 3

and became known as the "Bosnian Church". Naturally enough itwas fiercely persecuted by the Catholic Church, and by the time theTurkish conquest was complete, in 1463, many of its adherents wereinclined to favour conversion to Islam rather than Catholicism. So ithappened that under Ottoman rule there were in Bosnia a land-owning class of native Moslem Beys and a population of Catholic,Orthodox and Moslem peasants and small-town dwellers. To thesewere added, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a significantnumber of Sephardic Jews. The last element in this exceptionallyvaried cultural landscape were the gypsies who were widespreadthroughout the Balkans.

This confusion of cultures was, until the relatively recent Euro-peanization of all aspects of life, immediately visible in the villagesand towns. It was described by a Scottish traveller, R. Munro, on ajourney through Bosnia in 1894 - two years after Andric was born:

But whatever be the race or creed of the modern Bosniac - Slav,Semite or Turk: Christian, Jew or Moslem - he still lives, movesand has his being in the traditional work of his forefathers. Hence,as might be expected, the costumes seen in Sarajevo are somewhatbewildering. Of the men, some wear the fez or turban, along witha tight jacket, loose knickerbockers, stockings and pointed slip-pers. Others have costumes which appear to have borrowed theirindividual elements from mixed sources. Almost every man wearsround his waist a sash or leathern girdle, in the folds of which hecarries such necessary objects as tobacco, knife, etc. The Mayor ofSarajevo wears European dress and a fez. Women also adhere totheir traditional costumes. Veiled or unveiled, they strut along onwooden slippers and the divided skirt a la Turque. Mussulmanwomen seldom appear on the streets; but a Catholic or Jewish girlmay be seen wearing a fez, or a small round cap ornamented withcoins, by way of setting off her coquettish face.1

Bosnia, then, at the time of Andric's birth, was more than merelythe frontier between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires - it was anarea where East and West met and intermingled to a far greaterextent than in the rest of the Balkan peninsula. To describe it as the"meeting-place of East and West" is to describe not only its histori-cal and geographical role, but the daily experience of its inhabitants.


It is an ostensibly Christian country where minarets dominate theurban skyline, where aspects of Islamic observance have crept into theChristian rite, where the air is filled with the aroma of freshly groundTurkish coffee and leisurely narghiles, with the regular call of themuezzin and traditional Slavonic song. Orthodox and Catholicfestivals alternate with each other and with the holy days of Islam, andrichly ornamented oriental wares and foodstuffs fill the marketsalongside stalls selling Croatian and Serbian national dress.

Eastern features dominated the life of the towns until the Austrianannexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1878, when rapid changeswere introduced. Nevertheless, despite Central European adminis-trative buildings dating from that period and the extensive industrialand residential expansion since the Second World War, the mainimpression of the centre of Sarajevo is not very different today fromthis description by Arthur Evans in 1876:

But a turn in the road reveals to us the Damascus of the North - forsuch is the majestic title by which the Bosniac Turks, who considerit, after Stamboul, the finest city in Turkey-in-Europe, delight tostyle Sarajevo. Seen, indeed, from above, in an atmosphere whichthe Bosniac historian has not inaptly compared to that of Misr andSham (Egypt and Syria), it might well call up the pearl and emeraldsettings of Oriental imagery. The city is a vast garden, from amidstwhose foliage swell the domes and cupolas of mosques and baths;loftier still, rises the new Serbian Cathedral; and lancing upwards,as to tourney with the sky, near a hundred minarets. The airyheight to the East, sceptred with these slender spires of Islam andturret-crowned with the Turkish fortress (raised originally by thefirst vizier of Bosnia on the site of the older "Grad" of Bosnianprinces), commands the rest of the city, and marks the dominationof the infidel. Around it clusters the upper-town, populatedexclusively by the ruling caste; but the bulk of the city occupies anarrow flat amidst the hills, cut in twain by the little river Miljaska,and united by three stone and four wooden bridges. Around thisarena, tier above tier - at first wooded hills, then rugged limestoneprecipices - rises a splendid amphitheatre of mountains . . .2

It was into this atmosphere and landscape that Ivo Andric was born,and his early experience was coloured by three of the most striking

Introduction 5

aspects of Bosnian life: its mountains gazing impassively down onthe passing generations; its variety of cultures; its narrow valleyswhere a bridge becomes not merely a means of crossing from oneisolated community to another, but a symbol of the links betweenmen regardless of their cultural differences. This experience is at theheart of Andric's work. Throughout his life he was fascinated by thedetailed history of his homeland, and one of the most characteristicaspects of his work is its concern with the transmutation of historicalevents into legend and anecdote, into art.

While he wrote a number of articles about the works of otherwriters, Andric never stated what his own intention was in writing aparticular work, saying that it was impossible to speak about whatone was going to do before one began and that afterwards the writerhad said all he had to say and was exhausted, "not so much by whathe had written, as by what he did not succeed in saying".3 What wassaid in the work, if it was good, could not be said differently, or itwould become something different itself, and the writer was quiteunimportant compared with the work.

Nevertheless, Andric has made a number of general statementsabout the nature of art and the function of literature. Two of themost developed can be seen as characteristic of his outlook. Onecomes in an essay on the nature of art: "Conversation with Goya",published in 1935. Andric was particularly drawn to Spain and, likemany writers of his generation, he felt a special affinity with thework of Goya. Here he puts into the painter's mouth words whichexplain the particular power of his painting, words which Goyahimself would never have spoken - for his statement is implicit in hiswork - but which explain the close bond, the "bridge", betweenGoya the painter and Andric the observer. The words can be read asAndric's own personal statement:

I have seen the stupidity of ignorant men of power, so-called "menof action", as well as the ineptitude, weakness and bewildermentof the world of learning. I have seen principles and systems whichappeared more solid than granite disperse like mist before theindifferent or hostile eyes of the world, and what was until amoment before truly a mist solidify in front of those same eyes andform into unshakeable, holy principles, more solid than any


granite. And I asked myself what the meaning of these changeswas, what plan was it all following, and what aim was it allpursuing? And however much I looked, listened, and wondered, Ifound neither meaning, nor plan, nor aim in any of it. But I cameto one negative conclusion: that our individual ideas, for all theirintensity, do not mean much and cannot achieve anything; and toone positive one: that we must listen closely to legends, thoseannals of collective human endeavour through the centuries, andtry to make out of them, as far as possible, the meaning of ourdestiny.

There are a few points of human activity around which legendshave been gradually built up in thin layers over the years. For along time I stood, bewildered by what was happening around me,and in the second half of my life, I came to the conclusion that itwas useless and mistaken to look for sense in the meaningless butapparently so important events taking place around us, but thatwe should look for it in those layers which the centuries have builtup around the few main legends of humanity. Those layerscontinue, if ever less faithfully, to reproduce the shape of thatgrain of truth around which they collect, and so carry it throughthe centuries. The true history of mankind is contained in fairy-stories; they make it possible to guess, if not to discover, itsmeaning. There are a few fundamental legends of humanity whichindicate or at least cast some light on the path we have travelled, ifnot on the aim we are pursuing. The legend of The Fall, thelegend of the Flood, the legend of the Son of Man crucified to savethe world, the legend of Prometheus and the stolen fire . . .4

The other general statement forms part of Andric's speech ofacceptance of the Nobel Prize, in 1961:

My homeland is truly "a small country between worlds" as one ofour writers has put it, and it is a country which is trying in allfields, including culture, at the price of great sacrifices andexceptional energy to compensate rapidly for all that its unusuallystormy and difficult past has denied i t . . . Your recognition of onewriter from that country undoubtedly means encouragement forthat endeavour. We are therefore bound to be grateful, and I amhappy that at this moment and in this place I can express this

Introduction 7

gratitude simply but sincerely not only in my own name, but inthe name of the literature to which I belong.

The other part of my task is somewhat more difficult andcomplicated: to say a few words in connection with the narrativework whose author you have honoured with this prize.

But where a writer and his work are concerned, does it not seema little unjust that the author of a work of art, in addition to givingus his creation, a part of himself in other words, should beexpected also to say something about himself and that work? Someof us are more inclined to look on the creators of works of arteither as dumb, absent contemporaries, or as celebrated ancestors,and we believe that the word of a work of art is purer and clearer ifit is not confused by the living voice of its creator. Such a view isnot unique or new. Montesquieu held that "writers are not goodjudges of their works". And I once read with wonder andunderstanding Goethe's rule: "The artist's task is to create, not totalk." And much later I was excited to come upon the samethought, clearly expressed in the work of the late lamented AlbertCamus.

For this reason I would like to lay the emphasis of this briefdiscussion on some observations on stories and story-telling ingeneral.

In a thousand different languages, in the most varied conditionsof life, from century to century, from the ancient patriarchal talestold in peasant huts by the fireside to the works of modern story-tellers emerging at this moment from publishing houses in all thegreat centres of the world, the tale of human destiny unfolds, toldendlessly and uninterruptedly by man to man. The method andform of this narration vary with time and circumstances, but theneed for stories and story-telling remains; the story flows on andthere is no end to the telling.

Sometimes it appears that over the centuries, from his firstspark of consciousness, man has been talking about himself,telling always the same story, in a million different variants, intune with the breathing of his lungs and the rhythm of his pulse.And that story seems, like the tales of the legendary Scheherazade,to seek to deceive the hangman, to delay the inevitability of thetragic blow that threatens us and to prolong the illusion of life. Or


perhaps the story-teller should try, through his work, to help manto find himself and his way in the world? Perhaps his vocation is tospeak in the name of all those who were unable to expressthemselves, or prevented from doing so because they were struckdown before their time, by life, the executioner? Or is it that thestory-teller tells himself his tale, as a child sings in the dark, todelude his fear? Or is the aim of the story to illuminate, at least alittle, the obscure paths on to which life often casts us, and to tellus something more than we, in our weakness, can discover andcomprehend about the life which we live but which we do not seeand do not always understand. So that frequently we learn whatwe have done and what we have left undone, what to do and whatnot to do, from the words of a good story-teller. Perhaps it is inthose tales, both oral and written, that the true history of mankindis contained, and perhaps it is possible, if not to know, then atleast to glimpse in them the meaning of that history.5

The basic idea of each of these passages is expressed in virtuallythe same words: "Perhaps it is in those tales, oral and written, thatthe true history of mankind is contained and perhaps it is possible, ifnot to know, then at least to glimpse in them that history." And:"The true history of mankind is contained in fairy-stories, they makeit possible to guess, if not to discover, its meaning."

The distinction Andric makes here between "knowing" and"glimpsing", "guessing" and "discovering" the meaning of man'shistory is crucial. The word used in Serbo-Croat ("slutiti") means"to sense", "to have an inkling", and it implies intuition as opposedto logical, reasoned knowledge. For Andric, truths about human lifecannot be known, they can only be experienced, and they arecrystallized in works of art, in the paintings of Goya, in stories andlegends.

It is to these legends, to the layers accumulating around the fewmain legends of humanity, in the particular form in which they werebuilt up in the historical circumstances of his native Bosnia, thatAndric was to return so fruitfully in his works of fiction. In this hewas to draw heavily, although often indirectly, on the rich oralliterature of the South Slav lands.

There were two other important influences on Andric's childhood

Introduction 9

and youth which are also reflected in his work and which seem tocontribute to the same general conception of the way in which artcan convey truth. The first was his Catholic upbringing, whichinclined Andric to see human experience in terms of certain abstractcategories, such as evil, sin, fear, lust - and to recognize the strengthof the parable as a medium.

The second influence is more difficult to trace and identify, as itwas the result of no specific training or individual experience. It isthe "Oriental" flavour of life, which Andric absorbed from his earlyexperience of living in Bosnia. At one or two points in his work weare given a glimpse of something of the way in which this experiencewas communicated to him, but it remains impossible to be specific.It seems to have something to do with that "silence" of Bosnia,which he describes in Bosnian Story - a non-Western, non-intellec-tual acceptance of life in its totality, without analysis, withoutexplanation; an Eastern stoical respect for life whatever it brings anda tendency to revere its silent physical manifestations rather thanabstractions. This outlook is perhaps best seen in the short story"The Bridge on the Zepa". The story emphasizes the mysteryinvolved in the building of the bridge: the builder lives outside townlike an ascetic, in a world of silent meditation over his plans andcalculations, working with religious dedication until finally his ideais embodied in stone. The whole task seems to have a significancegreater than anyone can explain. The vizier who commissioned thebridge wants his motto engraved on it: "In silence lies security".6

This silence is the most important aspect of the bridge: it is thesilence of a complete statement which cannot be further described orexplained, but which embodies a truth. The motto arises out of thevizier's fear of the fact that words can engender evil, treachery,deceit. The stone bridge represents a silent link between man'sincomprehension in the face of life and his apprehension of aharmony which could give his life meaning. The strivings of thehuman spirit are here given form in the skilfully carved stone whichrepresents the beauty and permanence men crave. The idea of thebridge grew out of the vizier's experience of evil, unhappiness,arbitrary persecution and imprisonment, and out of his awareness ofthe transience of life. In the end he decides not even to have themotto engraved - leaving the bridge to stand alone, embodying both

10 Ivo A ndric: Bridge between East and West

the vizier's idea and the creative principle, which is represented bythe builder: it needs no further comment. The story of the buildingof the bridge ends with the words:

There, in Bosnia, it gleamed in the sun and shone in themoonlight and carried people and animals across the river. Littleby little, the circle of freshly-dug earth and discarded objects thatsurround any new building disappeared completely. People tookaway and the water carried off the broken stakes and pieces ofscaffolding and unwanted wood, and the rains washed away thetraces of the stonemasons' work. But the countryside could notmerge with the bridge, nor the bridge with the landscape. Seenfrom the side, the bold white sweep of its arch looked alwaysseparate and alone, and took the traveller by surprise, like anunusual idea which had gone astray and been trapped among thewild limestone mountains.7

Ideas thus "trapped" form the substance of Andric's work, andthe purpose of the present study will be to examine something of theprocess of "pursuing" and capturing them in works which are theproducts of a mind educated in the Western tradition, but formedalso, at least in part, by those same wild limestone mountains ofBosnia.

Andric the man - a biographical outline

It is of course in trying to capture something of the nature of IvoAndric the man that one is most conscious of the reluctance withwhich the writer allowed himself to be a public figure. The strengthof his sense of the responsibility imposed on him by his vocation isclear when one considers the extent to which he did involve himselfin public life, and his acceptance of his responsibilities is the more tobe admired.

Andric's friend, the cartoonist Zuko Dzumhur, has said thatAndric frequently bemoaned the fact that he had not written under apseudonym: "I would have been far freer, and I would, perhaps,have been a better writer. This wretched name has made manydemands on me and limited me in many ways."8

Whatever can be discovered about Andric the man from his own

Introduction 11

writings, and the statements and recollections of those who knewhim, can be only a fragment of the truth. For Andric had a carefullydeveloped sense of the limits of his public personality, and wouldreveal only what he was prepared to reveal. He has been describedby a close friend as an "iceberg" of which nine tenths wereperpetually in darkness.9

"What do I remember?" wrote Andric's friend Sreten Marie,when asked to contribute to a book of recollections. "Ivo's veryindividual tournure d'esprit, a certain melancholic irony that waspeculiar to him. Yes, and that unforgettable, slightly nasal, warmvoice coming down from his wide mouth. With his gaze usuallyturned inwards, but suddenly directed straight into my eyes, asthough he were taking me into himself as well."10

Andric was quite consistent in his desire for anonymity and hisconviction that knowledge of a writer's life was simply irrelevant toan understanding of his work. There is an air of well-guardedsecrecy about even some of the simplest facts of his life. The story istold, for instance, that when asked directly whether the house inTravnik which is now a museum was really the house in which hewas born, Andric replied ambiguously: "A man has to be bornsomewhere."11 What follows is, consequently, the barest outline ofhis life.

Andric was born in Travnik, the old centre of the Ottomanadministration in Bosnia, on 9 October 1892, the only child ofCatholic parents, Ivan and Katarina Andric. His father was workingas a caretaker in Sarajevo, where Ivo was taken as a baby. When hisfather died, two years later, Katarina took her small son to herhusband's sister Ana in Visegrad. Ana, and her husband IvanMatkovic, a sergeant in the Austrian police service, took the childinto their home and brought him up as their own.

Andric has described the impact of his early experience inVisegrad in a short sketch, "Paths", written in 1940:

At the beginning of all the paths and roads I know, at the root ofthe very thought of them, stands sharply and indelibly drawn thepath along which I took my first steady steps.

This was in Visegrad, on its hard, uneven, well-trodden roads,


where everything is dry and miserable, without beauty, withoutjoy, without the hope of joy, without the right to hope, where abitter mouthful you have never eaten chokes you with every step,where heat and wind and snow and rain devour the earth and theseed in the earth, and everything which nevertheless germinatesand grows is scorched and bent and bowed as though the elementswere trying to return it to the formlessness and darkness out ofwhich it had escaped.

These are the countless paths that decorate the hills and slopesaround the town like strings and ribbons, merging with the whitemain road or vanishing beside the river and among the greenwillows. The instinct of men and animals sketched these paths andneed trod them down. It is hard to set off along them, to treadalong them and to return by them. By their side people sit onstones or shelter under trees, on a dry spot or in the meagre shade,to rest, to pray, or to count over the proceeds of a trip to market.It was on these paths, which the wind sweeps and the rain washes,which the sun infects and disinfects, where you meet onlyexhausted livestock and silent people with hard faces, it was onthese paths that I founded my dream about the riches and beautyof the world. It was here that, uneducated, weak and empty-handed, I was happy with an intoxicating happiness, happybecause of all that was not here, which could not be and neverwould be.

And on all the roads and highways I passed along in later life, Ilived only from that meagre happiness, from my Visegradthoughts about the riches and beauty of the created world. For,beneath all the roads of the world, there always ran, visible andsensible only to me, the sharp Visegrad path, from the day I left ituntil today. It was on it that I measured my step and adapted mystride. It never left me, all my life.

At those times when I was wearied and poisoned by the world inwhich I found myself by some mischance, and where by somemiracle I had stayed alive, whenever the horizon darkened and mypurpose faltered, I would unfold before me, like a believer hisprayer mat, the hard, poor, high Visegrad path which heals allpain and wipes away all suffering for it contains them all in itself,and surpasses them all. And so, many times in a day, exploiting

Introduction 13

every moment of quiet in the life around me, every pause inconversation, I would tread part of the road I never should haveleft. And so, by the end of my life, unseen and in secret, I shallnevertheless have trodden the appointed length of the Visegradpath. And then, with the thread of life, it too will come to an end.And it will be lost where all paths end, where all roads vanish,where there is no longer any walking or effort, where all thehighways of the earth become entangled in a senseless ball andburn, like the spark of salvation, in our eyes which themselvesgrow dim, for they have led us to our aim and to the truth.12

In Visegrad Andric made his first friends, playing with them bythe river and on the bridge. He describes some of the traditionalchildren's games and the legends that coloured and shaped them inThe Bridge on the Drina. From the age of six he attended primaryschool, and the four years he spent there were the happiest of hisformal education, thanks particularly to one teacher, LjubomirPopovic, of whom he always retained vivid and warm memories.

In the autumn of 1902 Andric was registered at the High School inSarajevo, the oldest secondary school in Bosnia. He lived there withhis mother, who had remained in Sarajevo working after herhusband's death.

During Andric's secondary school days Bosnia had a population ofsome two million, of whom 87 per cent were illiterate. In 1905statistics record nearly nine thousand civil servants, of whom six anda half thousand were foreigners from all parts of the Habsburg Mon-archy, so that the streets and cafes of Sarajevo were full of a mixtureof Slav languages, with a strong German element.

The teaching staff of the school was a similar mixture of nationali-ties. In the first twenty years of its work, of a total of eighty-threeteachers, apart from teachers of religion, only three were of localorigin. The teaching programme was devoted to producing dedi-cated supporters of the Monarchy, and Andric describes this phaseof his education as a sad contrast to his elementary school experi-ence: "All that came later, at secondary school and university, wasrough, crude, automatic, without concern, faith, humanity, warmthor love."13

This view of his formal education is necessarily coloured by the


growing resentment felt by Andric and his contemporaries towardsthe dominant culture. Later, Andric the writer was able to look on thefate of foreigners serving in the wilds of Bosnia with sympathy. At thisstage in his life, however, Andric's lack of success at school can be atleast partly explained by a sense of alienation from the majority of histeachers. There was one notable exception, Tugomir Alaupovic, whobecame Andric's great support and mainstay in years to come.

It seems that, for the most part, Andric pursued his own interestswhile at secondary school, showing very early the passion for readingwhich he has described as dominating his schooldays. He read DonQuixote - in German - when he was twelve or thirteen, and amongmany other works, he had read the whole of Strindberg (withoutunderstanding all of it, as he said later) by the time he left school. And,if his school career had been far from brilliant, at least he left able toread major works of European literature in Latin, Greek, German,French and Slovene.

It was at secondary school also that Andric began to write. He wasalways convinced that his was what he wanted to do, although hereceived no encouragement from home. When Andric showed hismother one of his first pieces, she responded: "Did you write this?What did you want to do that for?"14

In 1912 Andric registered at the university of Zagreb, with ascholarship from an educational foundation in Sarajevo. In 1913 hetransferred to the university of Vienna. It was here that he firstbecame acquainted with the work of Kierkegaard, whose Either . . .Or ... became his constant companion for the next few years. Hebecame seriously ill, showing the first signs of the tuberculosis thathad haunted his family, killing his father and his three uncles by thetime they were thirty-two years old. It was on medical grounds thatAndric asked to be allowed to leave Vienna and continue his studies, ifpossible, in Russia. It is likely, however, that he was motivated also bya political protest planned by fellow-Slav students in Vienna, toboycott German-speaking centres and transfer to Slav universities.Early in 1914 Andric transferred to Cracow.

During the first months of 1914 Andric was particularly active,contributing reviews, poems and notices of art exhibitions to severalZagreb periodicals. His letters to friends from this period arecheerful:

Introduction 15

I can't say that my life here is dull, we have come by chance intovery excellent company, where there are all kinds of things whichare otherwise rare: good people, witty women and fresh sand-wiches - and, were I well, all would be well. . .

I have given up tobacco, but I can't do without my night walks- I think that in May I shall either recover or die . . ,15

Early in June an anthology of New Croatian Lyric Verse appearedin Zagreb, containing six poems by Andric. He was described in thenotes on contributors:

The most extraordinary Sarajevan: without a trace of Turkishatavism: delicate, pale, with a fragile, fragrant soul like thosewhite flowers of his that light up the sweet sorrow of his soft,yearning dreams. Too lacking in energy to write long articles.Brief, like a transitory love affair. A prince without a court, pagesor a princess. In the winter he breathes his fill of cafe air, and inthe spring he heals himself with breaths of air from the luxuriantmeadows. Unhappy as all artists are. Ambitious. Sensitive. In aword: he has a future.16

On 28 June a friend in Cracow told Andric the news of theassassination in Sarajevo. Leaving his few belongings with hislandlady, Andric went straight to the station and took a train toZagreb. In the middle of July he set off with his friend, the poetVladimir Cerina, to spend the summer vacation at Cerina's home inSplit. The young men were becoming increasingly uneasy about thepolitical situation, and when they reached Rijeka Cerina suddenlyleft Andric, saying that he had to go urgently to Italy. He did notoffer any explanation to Andric, but a few days later police came tosearch for him at the offices of the paper where he had worked inZagreb.

Andric arrived in Split exhausted and ill. The police took anobvious interest in his movements and by the time war was declaredAndric was fully expecting to be arrested: most of his friends werealready in prison. It was on 29 July that he was finally arrested andimprisoned.

Andric's experience of prison was varied. From Split he was takento Sibenik, further up the Adriatic coast, and from there, with some


350 others, to Rijeka. Many of the prisoners were then taken on toPest, while another group, including Andric, arrived on 19 Augustin Maribor (Marburg) prison, in what is now Slovenia.

In Maribor, the prisoners were eight to ten to a room and Andricand his fellows quickly organized their time in reading, discussionand learning foreign languages. "We've founded a proper little uni-versity", Andric wrote to his friend Evgenija Gojmerac in January1915.17

Nevertheless, despite the artificially cheerful tones of his letters ofthis time, Andric's health was rapidly deteriorating, and othernotes are sounded:

I'm a bit weak, but I'm protecting the little health I have and Ihope that I shall be able to hold out. I want to hold out in order tosave my mother's only child. [November 1914]18 I can't tell youhow much effort it takes to survive just one afternoon, sometimesjust one hour. [January 1915]19 Sometimes I become impatient,but I force myself to be calm and sit down, God knows how often,at the table: all neuter nouns, etc. . . . Believe me, grammars arethe only books I can read calmly, for everything else reminds meof the past or the present, and I don't want that. [March 1915]20

The case against Andric was eventually dropped through lack ofevidence, and he left prison on 20 March 1915. He spent thefollowing two years, until the Amnesty of 1917, interned in the smallBosnian village of Ovcarevo, near Travnik, and later in the neigh-bouring town of Zenica. "Mother is very happy. It has been threewhole years since she saw me. And she can't grasp all that hashappened to me in that time, nor the whole of my crazy, cursedexistence. She cries, kisses me and laughs in turn. Like a mother."21

After the comradeship of the prison in Maribor, Andric's lettersfrom Bosnia in this period express a deep sense of isolation anddespondency. His experience of exile in the wild mountains in theheart of Bosnia certainly coloured the atmosphere of the novelBosnian Story, set in Travnik and describing the exile and isolation ofthe small diplomatic community there in the early nineteenthcentury.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Andric's internment in Bos-nia was the fact that he came into close contact with the Franciscan

Introduction 17

parish priest of Ovcarevo, and with the friars of the monastery ofGuca gora. Andric spent much of his time reading the monasterychronicles and listening to the friars' stories, learning from themabout the history of the Franciscans in Bosnia. It was a world whichwas rapidly disappearing but to which Andric was to return often onhis visits to Bosnia throughout his life.

Towards the end of 1917 - following the Amnesty, and after ashort holiday in Visegrad and a spell in hospital in Sarajevo - Andricwent to Zagreb, where many young men of his generation wereconverging, released like him from prison and internment andanxious to avoid conscription in the greater anonymity of the city.Andric was by now seriously ill and was taken into the Hospital ofthe Sisters of Mercy, which had become a new meeting-place formany who had been together in prison.

In the company of several like-minded young men and writers,including the renowned playwright Ivo Vojnovic from Dubrovnik,Andric entered fully into the intellectual life of the time. At the endof 1917, with three others, he launched a new literary periodical, TheLiterary South, the first literary magazine of an expressly Yugoslavorientation. Its first number appeared on 1 January 1918. In thisjournal and others, Andric began to publish regularly: reviews ofbooks and plays, verse, translations (of Walt Whitman and Strind-berg), and the first fragment of a story, '4)erzelez at the Inn".22

In these first months of 1918, Andric's health was deterioratingsteadily. He was described by several contemporaries as beingexceptionally thin and pale, with all the signs of approaching death.

The first weeks after the end of the War were intoxicating for thepeoples of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats andSlovenes. In the words of Vojnovic: "We look at one another, palewith happiness, and ask 'Is this true? - Is this really happening tous?'".23

Nevertheless, it did not take long for Andric and Vojnovic torealize that the organization of the new state had simply replaced theold one, more or less unchanged. They were deeply disappointed,but resolved to carry out their duty to their fellow-countrymen asconscientiously and seriously as they could.

In November 1918 Andric published an article in the Zagrebpaper The News, entitled "Let the intruders remain silent":


The idea of national unity is the legacy of our finest generationsand the fruit of heavy sacrifice. This unity, the dream of our life,and the meaning of our struggles and suffering, must not, nowthat it is largely realized, be allowed to fall into the hands ofintruders, to be tainted by the marks of their unclean fingers andtreated with their toothless sophisms . . . And all of us who borethis idea of unity unsullied through fratricidal battles, and did notdeny it before the slanderous Austrian judges, we shall be able todefend it also from unscrupulous journalists and sullen self-styledpoliticians.24

This is the tone of a young man with a sense of strong moralobligation to his country and his countrymen, and a clear, deter-mined allegiance to the idea of national unity. His temperamentcould not long sustain easy enthusiasm for superficial victory, and itis possible also that the state of his health contributed to his bleakperception of the political reality of the "victory."

Towards the end of the summer Andric's first book, Ex Ponto,was published. In December, Ivo Vojnovic wrote to his brother:

I'm sending you Ex Ponto which has created a great sensation.The writer is a young Catholic, a perfect young man. A Serb fromBosnia, where he contracted tuberculosis. He is here now,running The Literary South, my constant companion, one of thebest and most refined souls I have ever met. This work of his willbecome "Das Gemeingut" of all peoples when it is translated.C'est un grand poete, et une dme exquise.25

In January 1919, Andric was back in hospital. Vojnovic was nowseriously anxious for his life, and wrote to Andric's friend andformer teacher Tugomir Alaupovic, who was now Minister ofReligious Affairs in Belgrade, asking him to use his influence withthe government to finance treatment abroad. In the end Andricdecided to go to Split, and he remained there and on the nearbyisland of Brae until mid-September, when he returned to Zagrebsaying that he had been cured by the "air, sun and figs of Brae".

While he was on the island, Andric had completed work on asecond volume of prose poems, Anxieties, which was published thefollowing year.

Introduction 19

With these two volumes of prose poems and the first part of thestory, "The Journey of Alija -Derzelez", in print, Andric waslaunched on his literary career. "Andric est arrive", wrote the Serbianwriter Milos Crnjanski at the end of his review of Ex Ponto.26 Hewas, however, dissatisfied with the circumstances of his life. On theone hand the activists had begun to leave Zagreb. Andric wrote toAlaupovic in March 1919: "We have all dispersed, and I feel lonelierthan ever in my life."27 On his return from the coast the townseemed even more deserted: Vojnovic was his one real friend left andhe was frequently ill. At the same time, Andric had begun to beanxious about his family responsibilities. He had written to Alaupo-vic before he left for the coast, asking him to look out for a suitablepost for him. His uncle was growing old and responsibility for caringfor his mother and aunt would soon fall on him:

This is what will not permit me to go on living this impoverished,but free and fine style of life . . . I have no one whom I couldconsult about this matter (except Vojnovic who has persuaded meto write), so I am asking you whether you could bear my situationin mind . . ,28

Something of a more general dissatisfaction with his surroundingscan be seen in another letter to Alaupovic, written in July: "I shall beglad to get to grips with some concrete work which has nothing to dowith journalistic literary cliques."29 Alaupovic wrote in September1919, offering Andric the post of secretary in his Ministry. Towardsthe end of October, Andric left for Belgrade.

The first formative phase of Andric's life was over, coloured bypoverty, illness, imprisonment and exile against a background ofinternational tension and war. Andric set out, in generally betterhealth, into a job about which he knew nothing but which offered apreviously unknown stability. He was setting out into a town he hadnever seen. But he was going as an established writer, with his firstbook sold out after enthusiastic reviews. He entered immediatelyinto the literary life of Belgrade, focused on the "Moscow" cafe,where he was warmly welcomed and accepted.

Andric was one of the best-known and most popular young writers


in Belgrade and he seems to have been spared the barbs of the pressof his day. Nevertheless, the role of a public figure did not reallyappeal to him. Those who knew him then describe how he withdrewincreasingly into himself and gradually took less and less part in thediscussions so beloved of Belgrade literary circles.

In February 1920 Andric entered the Diplomatic Service. Thischoice of career was ideally suited to Andric's temperament. Indeed,it has been described by a friend of his as "not only a career, but avocation". It can be seen almost as an image of Andric's involvementin the outside world: it was not Andric as an individual whoappeared in public, but Andric the writer with a profound sense ofobligation to this country and its culture, as the representative ofthat culture - just as he was his country's representative abroad.There were drawbacks: Andric complained that the consulates andembassies were understaffed, that he had to work long hours and didnot have enough time for his writing. He also hated all the pomp andceremony, enduring it, however, with dignified good grace, as hewas later to accept the international attention and acclaim lavishedon him as Nobel Prizewinner.

Andric's career as a diplomat was outwardly uneventful. He maderapid progress through a series of postings, and was appointedMinister to Berlin on 1 April 1939, at the age of 47. This appoint-ment shows clearly that Andric was highly regarded and trusted ingovernment circles.

If Andric's career was particularly well suited to his abilities andtemperament, it no doubt also suited him well to be right outsideliterary circles in Belgrade. Although he maintained many closefriendships among his fellow-writers, he was far removed from theintensely self-absorbed, sometimes violently polemical tradition ofliterary life in his homeland.

Throughout this period, despite the obvious success of hisdiplomatic career, Andric was concerned above all with his writing,taking advantage of any free time he had and avoiding more than theessential social contacts. At the same time, he steeped himself in theatmosphere of the cities where he worked. His experiences of somany European centres were full and very fruitful, at least indi-rectly. Immediate impressions of his travels form an importantcomponent of Signs by the Roadside:

Introduction 21

There are paths that I have not seen and which I shall never tread- and there are many of them! - but that is because I did not findthe energy or the time or the possibility of doing so. But there isnot a single path or road that I have not at least stepped on to if itwere possible. In doing so I did not know fear, fatigue orhesitation. And this mad and uncontrollable curiosity of mine wasthe cause of many of my wanderings, mistakes, senseless ormisguided acts. It devoured the greater part of my strength, but itcould also be called my heroism and my main justification; it couldalso be the real basis of my pride, if I wished to pride myself onanything and if my curiosity needed it.30

The majority of the pieces refer to specific journeys and places.The following passage is typical:

In all the cafes in Madrid there are swarms of people cleaningshoes, roaming with their equipment from table to table, goingclose up to each customer and asking in a rough voice and with aninsolent expression:

"Limpiam?" ("Shall we clean them?")and as they do so they point impertinently at your shoes sugges-ting to the customers that their shoes are not as clean as they mightbe, and forcing their services on them. And they often succeed.

These are for the most part young people of filthy, repulsiveappearance. They are often police spies or agents, involved insecret, disreputable affairs, or both. They usually live with andfrom prostitutes, and on Sunday afternoons they dress in the latestfashion.31

Andric's first posting was to Rome, and the city impressed himdeeply. He wrote to Alaupovic in June 1920:

Even the best historians, philosophers and archaeologists can onlyglimpse the greatness of Antiquity and the desperate effort of theRenaissance, for their conclusions can be based only on frag-ments. It is as though someone would try to reconstruct from abroken skeleton the beauty of that person in his life or herlifetime. I know only one thing: that each little piece of stoneexudes such beauty, such peace and strength, that I am oftenhappy and proud that the human consciousness was able to


contain such beauty and that human hands had the strength togive it form . . . How often have I wanted to show you . . . themost beautiful places and to share my pleasure and joy with you,my closest, dearest friend.32

An interesting reflection of Andric's preoccupations at this timecan be seen in a remark in another letter, written to Alaupovic fromVisegrad in July:

If everything here is not as I would like it to be, I am of courseglad that the Bosnia which I carry with me in my thoughtsthrough Rome is one thing, but this tough, real one is somethingelse . . . I have already told you that I am enjoying Rome. But Icannot write about how that city enriches the soul, for it seems tome that even Goethe's words about it are superfluous. It happensin an almost mystical way. After the difficulties and effort and theproblems of settling in, suddenly, unexpectedly, there begins togrow in one a deeper sense of all these centuries-long layers ofreligion, ideas, states and institutions. All these humanendeavours, so contradictory among themselves, teach you thesame thing: that the meaning of human activity on earth is: law,measure, order and denial. And everything great and beautifulthat has been created has been created in blood and sweat, and inSilence . . ,33

In October 1921 Andric was posted to Bucharest. His letters fromthere deal mostly with literature, but in March 1922 he wrote toAlaupovic expressing his concern at the news reaching him of thepolitical and economic situation in Yugoslavia. He was troubledparticularly by the threat from all sides to the Yugoslav unity inwhich he so passionately believed. This letter expresses an acutesense of isolation in a foreign land and an anxiety that he was losingtouch with his fellow-countrymen, growing by the end of the letterinto a determination to leave his career and return to either Belgradeor Zagreb. His health was bad again, and this may have contributedto his mood, for in June he wrote again to Alaupovic in better spirits:

Of course there are difficult times when one is abroad, such as Iknew only during the war . . . I live quietly, observe the peopleand this interesting country, and I am acquiring, with the tenacity

Introduction 23

of a miser, the most various experience. And while everythingaround me seethes with delight in politics, money, petrol andscandal, I am writing - whenever I can - a Bosnian story, which Ihope will perhaps give you some pleasure when you read it. I hopeso anyway . . ,34

In November Andric was transferred to Trieste, but the dampclimate did not suit him and, on his doctor's advice, he was moved toGraz the following January, as Vice-Consul. In Graz he took up hisinterrupted university studies again, following lecture courses inhistory, philology and philosophy, and beginning work on a doctoraldissertation.

There was an unexpected setback to his career at this point. A newlaw was passed stipulating that civil servants must be universitygraduates. As Andric had not completed his degree, his employmentwas terminated at the end of December 1923. The Consul General inGraz made an eloquent plea on Andric's behalf:

His bearing at work and outside is exemplary. With industriousapplication he has acquired a wide-ranging knowledge of thediplomatic consular profession, he^cnows the organization of stateadministration very well; he has been employed with great successin various tasks of an administrative, judicial and consular-commercial nature. With his rare intelligence, many-sided educa-tion, distinguished manner, his kindly dealings with the public,his serious and honest character; his knowledge of the Serbian,French, German and Italian languages, his firm will to work withthe qualifications he has acquired so far, Mr Andric offers the bestguarantee that he will with time become an excellent civil servant,who can only be a credit to the diplomatic profession, and benefitto the state and our people . . ,35

In June 1924 Andric was duly granted his doctorate, with a thesisentitled "Die Entwicklung des geistlichen Lebens in Bosnien unterder Einwirkung der tiirkischen Herrschaft" (The development ofintellectual life in Bosnia under Turkish administration), havingbeen absolved from completion of his first degree on the recommen-dation of two of his professors. In September Andric returned to the


Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade, where he remained untillate October 1926, when he was sent to Marseilles as Vice-Consul.

In the meantime, his literary work was going well. His firstcollection of stories was published in 1924 and awarded a prize bythe Serbian Royal Academy, and in February 1926 he was elected tothe Academy.

Andric's time in Marseilles began sadly. His uncle Ivan Matkovichad died in 1924, his mother the following year, and now he receivedthe news that his aunt had died as well. He wrote to Alaupovic inFebruary 1927:

1927 did not start particularly cheerfully for me. I had 'flu andangina and had just begun to recover when I heard that my aunthad died in Visegrad. I could not even go to her funeral. And shewas the last member of our family. Or rather, I am the last. I haveno family left now. Nowhere and no one to go to. I am completelyalone here. Apart from official contacts, which are neither interes-ting nor pleasant, I have no company whatever. During the day Iam in the office, and in the evening I read whatever comes my way

36

At the end of the year Andric was sent temporarily to Paris, where hespent much of his spare time reading the three volumes of corres-pondence of Pierre David, the French consul in Travnik at thebeginning of the nineteenth century who was to become the maincharacter in the novel Bosnian Story.

In 1928 Andric was posted to Madrid as Vice-Consul. Spain madea particularly strong impression on him, as can be seen from severalpieces in Signs by the Roadside, and from his essay "Goya", whichappeared in 1929.

From 1 January 1930 Andric worked as secretary to the Perma-nent Delegation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at the League ofNations in Geneva, becoming deputy delegate the following year.His second volume of short stories was published, and it too wasawarded a prize. In 1933 he returned to the Ministry in Belgrade. Inthe same year he was awarded the Legion of Honour, which wasfollowed by several distinctions, including the Order of the RedCross in 1936. He was made Director of the Political Section of theMinistry in 1935, and with the growing tension in Europe found less

Introduction 25

and less time for regular literary work. In November 1937 he wasnamed Assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in April ofthe following year he was sent to Berlin.

There is evidence that Andric did what he could to exert whatsmall and insignificant influence he had to help Polish prisoners afterthe Nazi occupation of Poland. But his efforts could not of coursesucceed. Some insight into his state of mind can be gained from anentry in his notebook in September 1939:

In the worst moments of my life I have found unusual andunexpected consolation in imagining another life, the same asmine in dates, names and events, but true, bright, pure; painful ofcourse as every life on earth must be, but without anything dark orugly in that pain; a life which begins with a blessing and is lost inthe heights and extinguished in light. And, standing thoughtfullyover the figure of that double of mine, as a tree stands over itsimage in still water, seeking salvation, I have forgotten for amoment my real life, while it trembled with my pain.37

As though trying to preserve this other imaginary world, a volumeof Andric's stories appeared in German in 1939: the book and thetranslator were warmly praised. Abruptly, however, the stillness ofthe water was shattered and Andric was obliged to confront thereality of the political situation.

Andric's comments on his experiences in Berlin in the early yearsof the War in Europe have not yet been published. In the outline ofhis biography printed by the Andric Trust in 1980, the followingentry in his diary is all that is recorded for 1940:

On 7 April he wrote:Whoever has glimpsed, even if only partially and for a moment,

the true fate of mankind, can no longer experience untroubled joy;he can no longer look without deep sorrow on a human beingstepping into the arena of the sun, on to a winding path with aknown end. Composed only of priceless elements from unknownworlds, a man is born in order soon to become a handful ofnameless soot, and as such, to vanish. And we do not know forwhose glory he is born, nor for whose amusement he is destroyed.He glints for an instant in the clash of contradictions of which he is


made, passes alongside other people, but not even with their eyescan they tell one another all the grief of their destinies. So somedisappear, and so, in cruel ignorance, others are born, and so theincomprehensible history of man runs on.38

The mood is one of hopelessness and frustration, and it is typicalenough of Andric that he should take such a wide view of humanhistory at this time. For all their drama, it was still the sheerpointlessness of the events around him that seems to have mostgrieved Andric in this passage.

Andric's position as his country's representative in Germany atthis time was, naturally, difficult. The former king, AlexanderKarad"jord"jevic, who was assassinated in Marseilles in 1934, hadtried to secure Yugoslavia's future through the Little Entente withRumania and Czechoslovakia under the auspices of France. His son,Peter, was a boy of ten when his father was murdered. A RegencyCouncil was established under Peter's uncle, Prince Paul. Hereversed Alexander's policies and linked Yugoslavia's economy withthat of Germany, which had become Yugoslavia's largest tradingpartner by 1939. Yugoslavia also had favourable trading agreementswith Italy and Hungary. Meanwhile, the occupation of CzechSudetenland and Austria confirmed the view of the Yugoslavgovernment that the only realistic policy for Yugoslavia was to allyherself to Germany politically as well.

In March 1941 Prime Minister Cvetkovic and the Minister ofForeign Affairs, Cincar-Markovic, went to Vienna at Hitler'srequest and signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging Yugoslavia's sup-port of Italy and Germany. Extracts from Andric's letters to Cincar-Markovic in 1941 suggest that he was critical of the Yugoslavgovernment's handling of the crisis, and in a letter of 17 March heasked to be relieved of his duties.

Events, however, moved too rapidly. Ten days later a coup d'etatdeposed Prince Paul, and his seventeen-year-old nephew was pro-claimed king. Yugoslavia was promptly invaded by the Germanarmy. On 17 April the High Command of the Royal Yugoslav Armyformally capitulated and the four long years of bitter resistance hadbegun.

Andric was taken with the rest of the Embassy personnel to the

Introduction 27

Swiss border, where they met up with officers of the Paris Embassyand officials from other German centres and occupied lands. In Junethey were all sent out of German territory in a special train.

Andric went straight to Belgrade. He was officially retired fromthe Diplomatic Service, but refused to take the pension due to him.He lived in complete isolation, refusing to co-operate in any waywith the quisling government.

In these circumstances of isolation and virtual immobility, Andricsettled down to work on the three novels which were published in1945. He refused to publish anything as long as the occupationlasted.

In the course of the bombing of Belgrade in 1944, he wrote in hisnotebook:

In exceptional and fateful events such as these air-raids, as intimes of harsh political oppression, the behaviour of most peopleis similar. The cowardly and the selfish believe that everythingthat happens - every single incident - is directed against thempersonally. The dull-witted, and those who are by nature recklessand careless, do not think about these events at all, until theyexperience them directly. Only the sensible man will observecoolly and interpret correctly, and try to identify and evaluatetheir general significance, and only after that does he examine theextent to which these events can affect him personally, and thenhe tries to remove himself from danger and defend himself - in sofar as that is possible and morally permissible.39

Andric's own behaviour during the air-raids has been recorded.He once told Zuko Dzumhur that he had been very frightened bythe sudden scream of the warning sirens the first day, and had runout of the house and set off with the endless column of people fleeingout of the city. As he went he looked around him and noticed thatthese people were all taking their families with them, their children,their infirm parents and relatives. "I looked myself up and down,"said Andric, "and saw that I was saving only myself and my overcoat. . ."40 He was ashamed and after that he never left his house, evenduring the fiercest bombing.

On 20 October 1944 the Partisans and the Red Army enteredBelgrade, and Tito was installed as the head of a Communist-


controlled government. In cultural life the years immediately follow-ing the War were marked by bustling activity and enthusiasm but,until the break with Stalin in 1948, also by the dominance of aSoviet-style Socialist Realist aesthetic.

In March 1945 the newly founded Serbian State publishing house,Prosveta, brought out its first title: The Bridge on the Drina, by IvoAndric. The Bridge on the Drina aroused great public interest. Its firstedition of five thousand copies was sold out within the year (therewere to be five editions by 1949). Andric sent a copy to Alaupovicwith this dedication:

You are partly to blame for my thick books. You encouraged meas a boy to follow this path. But I console myself: since you lovedand understood me as a sickly, ignorant child in the Sarajevogymnasium, you will, I am sure, understand me also today, as amature man, who has seen many countries and cities and who hasstill today, as once in his childhood, only one real, basic ambition:to grasp as much as possible of the spirit of the life around him andto give it on paper a form which could, more or less, be worthy ofthe name of art.41

In August Bosnian Story appeared, and in November The Womanfrom Sarajevo, as well as a collection of short stories.

Andric was now set on a course of steady activity and involvementin the intellectual and cultural life of his country. Shrinking alwaysfrom exposure as a private individual, he was nevertheless willing totake on the public duties of a man conscious of his responsibilities tohis fellow-countrymen. He was elected Vice-President of the Societyfor the Cultural Co-operation of Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union inNovember 1946, for example, and in the same month he was madePresident of the Yugoslav Writers' Union. He was elected Delegateto the National Assembly of Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1947, wherehe concerned himself particularly with cultural and educationalquestions. In April 1950 he was elected delegate to the Chamber ofNationalities of the National Assembly of the Federal NationalRepublic of Yugoslavia. He was decorated for his services to thepeople by the Praesidium of the National Assembly in 1952, and inDecember 1954 he was accepted for membership of the CommunistParty. This action was no doubt prompted by a desire to serve his

Introduction 29

country as fully as possible, rather than commitment to any politicalparty as such. Many of Andric's contemporaries have remarked onhis exceptional abilities in his work on committees. In view of hiswell-known reticence and preference for privacy, this public activitymust be seen as his own realization of the contribution he couldmake to the new, young society in the country to which he wasdeeply committed.

On 27 September 1958, at the age of 66, Andric married MilicaBabic, costume-designer at the National Theatre in Belgrade.Andric had been devoted to her for many years, but it was only nowthat her first husband died and they were free to marry. They hadten happy years of married life together before Milica died, agedfifty-nine.

Andric is recorded on several occasions before this as having beenasked by younger writers whether he thought a writer ought tomarry. He always replied that it was probably better not to, althoughthis would mean considerable self-denial. His close friend MajaNizetic-Culic, however, interprets his reluctance to marry earlierdifferently: "He was perpetually persecuted by a kind of fear; itseemed as though he had been born afraid, and that is why hemarried so late. He simply did not dare enter that area of life . . .And so he lived: on the one hand fear, and on the other solitude . . .And he did not know how to shake them off."42

Meanwhile, Andric's works were being translated into numerouslanguages and he continued to play an active part in the cultural lifeof Yugoslavia, participating in delegations to many countries includ-ing China in 1956 and London in 1959, when The Bridge on theDrinawas published there. On this occasion he also visited Edinburgh.

On 26 October 1961, Andric was awarded the Nobel Prize forliterature. His reaction was reported in the Yugoslav press:

All the questions I am being asked today can be reduced to threemain groups: What do I feel? What do I think? and What am Igoing to do?

The first question I can answer immediately and precisely. Themain emotion that fills me at this moment is a sense of gratitude. Iam grateful first of all to the Swedish Academy of Sciences; andthen to the institutions and individuals in my country who


proposed me for this award, to the institutions and individualsabroad who supported this proposal. I thank all those who everhelped me in my life and work, while I often did not manage tothank them even verbally.

What do I think? I think that my country, through itsliterature, has received international recognition.

What am I going to do? I shall answer this honestly too. I amgoing to wait patiently until all this excitement around me, whichI am not accustomed to, and all this holiday atmosphere is over, toget back once again to my ordinary, monotonous working day.And a working day is always a celebration for me . . ,43

The following year was filled with public recognition for Andric'swork in various countries. In March he set out on a journeyto Greece and Egypt, but he was taken ill in Cairo and returnedto Belgrade for an operation. He was obliged by his health torefuse invitations to visit the United States, France and Poland,among other countries. The public recognition continued,however, and numerous translations of his works appeared all overEurope, in America, Mexico, South America, Iran, Japan and theLebanon.

It is clear from remarks in his letters at this time that this publicattention was a burden to Andric. He endured it graciously, butbecame increasingly anxious to preserve his privacy. He wrote toMaja Nizetic-Culic in 1967: "I am reasonably well, although the lifeI am obliged to live is not at all healthy or agreeable . . ,"44 It wasparticularly hard that these years, when so much international andnational attention was focused on Andric, were the years of hismarriage. His wife undoubtedly helped him endure the attention,but they were granted all too little peaceful time together. Milicadied on 24 March 1968.

Andric was now seventy-six. He had never been strong, but nowhis deteriorating health obliged him to refuse all invitations to travelabroad, and he had frequently also to restrict his movements withinYugoslavia. He continued to work until 1974, when he becameseriously ill. In December he went into hospital, where he died, aftera long struggle, on 13 March 1975. His funeral was attended by someten thousand citizens of Belgrade.

Introduction 31

The following general comment on Andric the man was made by aBelgrade critic and philosopher, Dragan Jeremic:

Finally, a few words about the general impression Andric made onme. Andric behaved towards everyone, regardless of who he wasor what work he did, with the same kindness, patience andconcern. He was kind and pleasant precisely up to the point that itnever became familiarity. In his presence only those who tried tocross the barrier he put up for the sake of his peace, his work andhis essential concentration, could feel uncomfortable. He did noteasily abandon his plans and aims. That is why only those whowanted to get too close to him out of pure curiosity or self-interestmight meet with resistance. He prized, above all, qualities of theintellect, but he loved everything in life, as his work shows - opento virtually all manifestations of life. He knew how to listen as noone else, and from everything that anyone said or did he woulddraw out at least one thread for his rich and complex work. Andonly a truly wise man can do that. While ordinary people findmany things boring, empty and useless, a wise man knows how tofind benefit for his spirit and his work in everything. Andric knewhow to do that better than anyone else I have ever known.45

The literary and historical context

The last words of the preceding section can serve as a useful startingpoint for an attempt to place Andric the writer in the whole contextof European literature: "From everything that anyone did or said hewould draw at least one thread for his rich and complex work."Tracing possible influences on any writer with a truly individualvoice is a difficult task which can lead to only qualified statements.

On several occasions, in short articles written for various publica-tions, Andric has described his early thirst for books and theirinaccessibility to him. There were no books at all in the poor homesof Bosnia, except possibly one or two reference works or Churchcalendars. Even secondary school offered little or nothing, andduring his school years in Sarajevo there were only three or fourshops selling school and office material which also stocked a fewbooks. The biggest and best of these displayed several Serbo-


Croatian and quite a number of German works generally publishedin Vienna or Munich, light reading intended for the Austrian civilservants and officers, and some German translations of the Russianand Scandinavian works fashionable at the time. "They were all thesame to me", remarks Andric, "since I knew nothing whatever aboutany of them."46 He describes how he used to spend hours as aschoolboy in the front of this shop window - for him the onlywindow into the world - and at night he would go home and dreamabout it: "Then it was no longer an ordinary shop window, withbooks in it, but the light of the universe, a part of some constellationtowards which I was drawn with intense longing, but also with thepainful realization that it was inaccessible to me."47 He would go tothis enchanting window every day, and stare into it until he knew allthe names of the writers and titles by heart, wondering what washidden behind them and making up his own meanings for them.One enterprising boy at the school used to acquire catalogues fromvarious publishers and bookshops in the larger towns and thesewould sometimes contain the first instalment of an adventure story,as an advertisement. The entrepreneur would then hire out theprecious pages to his eager colleagues for a small sum. In thesecatalogues the boys read for the first time the names of Cervantes,Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne . . . as well as the titles ofnovels by Slav writers. Sometimes there would be a short synopsis ofthe works, but more often the boys made up their own:

And when we raised our eyes from the pages of our catalogues, wewould gaze into the distance and read in it novels which we wereunable then to reach, and some which we would never reach, forthey did not exist in any publisher's list. On the summer sky andthe green slopes of the mountains, above the tops of the minaretsand towers, we read, in lightning quick versions, our own dreamof books as the most beautiful of all the beautiful things in the richand beautiful world which was just opening up before us.48

Andric describes this experience as the beginning of his writing -not with his hand and not on paper, but in his mind, his thoughts,his imagination.

Eventually Andric and some school-fellows discovered that one ofthe stationers had a small lending department of some three or four

Introduction 33

hundred volumes in Serbo-Croat and German, mostly from thefamous Reclam's Universal-Bibliothek, which Andric describes inThe Bridge on the Drina as "those cheap little booklets with yellowcovers and unusually small print, which were the main spiritual foodaccessible to schoolboys in Sarajevo at the time".49 And Andric setabout reading, avidly and quite indiscriminately, all the works ofSlav, German and world literature that he could lay his hands on.While his tastes always remained wide, he gradually identified a fewwriters as particularly congenial, referring to them as his "bestfriends". The most important of these were Thomas Mann, MarcusAurelius, whose works he had by him constantly in his later years,and Goethe, without whom he refused to leave for the hospitalduring his last grave illness.

Another example of the importance of books to the young Andrichas often been quoted. When he was first imprisoned in Split he hadone book to share the dark hours of his solitary confinement. Muchhas been made of his apparent choice of "soulmate", but Andrichimself has given a more matter-of-fact account. He was told that hecould send for some warmer clothes, a blanket and books fromhome. Rejoicing at this news, Andric asked for all the books thatwere on his table. In his excitement, he forgot that he had just tidiedthem all away. There was just one single volume on his table,brought by the postman since his arrest: Kierkegaard's Either . . .Or . . . . This work can scarcely have contributed any real joy toAndric's situation, but, on the other hand, it would be wrong toattribute attitudes expressed in his early writings to this circum-stance. The volume had greater symbolic value than direct influ-ence: "That one single book was on my table, and that one singlework was the only one to reach me! But it was a book. I had a book inmy hand and I felt immediately that all that inexpressible fear hadvanished somewhere, that it was no longer anywhere in me; I feltthat I was continuing to live . . ."50

Because of his initial deprivation, books were always vitallyimportant to Andric. Later in his life, when he visited schools orprivate houses, he could never resist examining the books on theshelves. In every small town he visited he would call in at the library.When he became a successful writer, he gave generously to schoolsand libraries all over Yugoslavia to ensure that children should not


suffer the starvation of his own early years. His entire Nobel Prizewas dedicated to this cause.

In terms of his position in Yugoslav literature, Andric began towrite with its coming of age. The Serbo-Croat language had beenused in a standardized form as a written literary language only sincethe second quarter of the nineteenth century. This is not to say thatit had not been used as a means of literary expression. On thecontrary, centuries of occupation by foreign powers and widespreadilliteracy had fostered the growth of a rich oral literature. Withoutthis heritage, the phenomenon of Andric would be inexplicable: theparticular strength and resonance of his work springs directly fromthese roots, firmly planted in his native soil.

From these roots a literary tradition in Serbo-Croat grew up in thecourse of the nineteenth century. With a few exceptions, the writersof this period can be seen on the whole as serving a rapidapprenticeship to the craft of literature, steadily increasing its rangein terms of material and technique. By the beginning of thetwentieth century, under pressure of various political events andcircumstances, the cultural life of the Serbs and Croats had beenpropelled into Europe and writers had gained sufficient maturity tobe able fruitfully to absorb influences from the mainstream ofEuropean literature. The European context of literary activity in theYugoslav lands was no longer questioned. Since the end of thenineteenth century, young people from all parts of the futureKingdom of Yugoslavia had been travelling widely in Europe andstudying at various universities in the Habsburg Monarchy or inParis. It was at this time that Andric entered wholeheartedly into thecultural life of his country, eager to know and share in the wholeEuropean literary tradition.

This he did with great energy and thoroughness, acquiring, as wehave seen, a knowledge of several European languages as well asLatin and Greek by the time he left school. In this he was by nomeans exceptional among his fellow-writers and critics. The earlyyears of his literary activity were spent very much as part of a group,working on the one hand within the world of books and on the otherfor the improvement of cultural and social conditions. It was notuntil he was living in Belgrade in the 1920s that he began to separatehimself increasingly from the various literary circles there. Andric's

Introduction 35

work was well-known and widely acclaimed in Yugoslavia betweenthe wars, but it was after the Second World War that his stature inYugoslav literature was assured, and particularly, of course, after theinternational recognition of the Nobel Prize. He is now generallyregarded as the outstanding Yugoslav writer of the first half of thetwentieth century.

The external events which affected Andric's life were of course thecommon experience of his generation throughout the Western world- the two World Wars, the rise of Fascism and the growth ofCommunism as a political force. The direct involvement of theYugoslav lands in these events meant that their experience could nolonger be regarded as in any sense peripheral: Andric himself livedthrough the exceptional violence of the first half of the twentiethcentury which had such a profound effect on his whole generation.The bonds with his contemporaries throughout Europe were conse-quently deep, and his central experience of the tragic and violentdivisions between men was one with which his whole generation hadto come to terms.

In view of the highly individual flavour of Andric's imaginativeworld and his strength as a writer, it is more appropriate to talk interms of experience shared with his fellow-writers, of literary andimaginative sympathies rather than influences as such. Andric'swriting is of course shaped by his reading, on several different levels,of which many cannot ever be isolated. Meanwhile, various studieshave been written on the influences on his work which can be mostreadily identified, for example: Ivo Andric and Classical Literature;Andric and German Literature; Andric and Scandinavian Literature;Andric and the French; Andric, Strindberg and Kierkegaard; Andric andItalian Literature.51

The Classical influence has been seen chiefly in his lucid economi-cal style and in his stoical outlook. Points of contact have been notedwith such writers as Pascal and Montaigne, with poets such asHeine, Rilke and Maeterlinck. Andric himself has spoken of hisparticularly deep affection for Goethe. Naturally enough, however,affinities with various twentieth-century European writers are themost clearly seen.

Andric's most consistent contact was with German literature, andone of the first possible influences to be remarked on was that of


Kafka. Andric himself has, however, put this relationship in per-spective: "We were both subjects of the same Empire, we lived inthe same city, perhaps in the same street, perhaps we attendedlectures by the same professors, we breathed the same air, grew upin the same atmosphere, why should we not - here and there - havethought or said the same things?"52

Points of contact have also been identified with Nietzsche,mentioned by Andric in The Bridge on the Drina as one of the writerswhom the university students read avidly on the eve of the FirstWorld War: the idea of immutability personified by the bridge itself;the idea of perpetual repetition; Nietzsche's concept of "EwigeWiederkunft"; the notion of the dynamism of the struggle betweengood and evil; the theme of illusion. Ideas of this kind areundoubtedly present in Andric's work, although it would probablyagain be inappropriate to speak of a direct influence. A moreimmediate sympathy can be seen in Andric's attitude to the work ofThomas Mann, a writer whom he knew particularly well, but againthis affinity should not be exaggerated. Points of contact between thetwo writers include a concern with the legends of humanity, withhistory, with universals; an interest in the irrational stimuli ofhuman behaviour.

The influence of Scandinavian writers on Andric's generation hasbeen considerable; their discovery in the first years of the twentiethcentury was a revelation to intellectuals in Yugoslavia. Andric'simmoderate reading of Strindberg at an early age established acertain bond which can be seen most clearly in the intense irrationalpsychological currents beneath the surface of Andric's calm prose,particularly in the stories written between the wars concerningindividual psyches thrown off balance for one reason or another. Inhis mature years Andric retained a great respect for Scandinavianwriters of his own generation, and read them with more sympathy ashe grew beyond his early infatuation with Strindberg.

It is the name of Kierkegaard, however, which is most frequentlylinked with the early years of Andric's writing, and there is no doubtthat Andric was drawn to the philosophical and spiritual world heformulated. It was the expression of a world view with which Kafkaalso had much in common, describing himself as "on the same sideof life" as Kierkegaard. And of course it underlies the whole

Introduction 37

Existentialist approach, which affected so much European writing inthe first half of the twentieth century. Obvious affinities withKierkegaard include a fundamental anxiety, unease, as the centralexperience of life; a conviction that thought cannot be divorced fromthe immediacy of life; that understanding can be achieved onlythrough the experience itself; the notion that conditions of life arefundamentally the same for all men at all times; the dominant tone ofmelancholy, arising from a strong imagination able always to seeclearly the disparity between the real and the possible, and itscreative potential; and, related to this, the vital role of paradox andthe passion it generates; the crucial importance of isolation in theprocess of discovering truths about human existence.

At the heart of Andric's writing there is a certain rigour, springingon the one hand from the kind of self-denial proposed by Kierke-gaard, a concentration that depends on solitude and silence, and onthe other from a determination to hold all the paradoxical elementsof the experience of life together, to deny none in favour of acomfortable half-truth. It is this rigorous determination to confrontthe central paradoxes of the human condition that brings Andric'swriting close to that of the Existentialist writer he most admired,Camus. One could say of Andric's positive acceptance of transienceand a world dominated by arbitrary forces, as of Camus, that themere fact of facing the absurd clear-sightedly is in itself a partialrelease.

The presence of the German and Scandinavian literary traditionsin Andric's writing is perhaps most readily traced. This connectionis a result partly of his early education in the German-speakingworld, and partly of the strong presence in early twentieth-centuryEuropean writing as a whole of such thinkers as Nietzsche andKierkegaard. Another important, if unstated, influence on Andric'sgeneration is that of nineteenth-century French literature, andparticularly Flaubert.

Aspects of Andric's work, notably his concern with the perennialtruths of legend in a modern form, are close to Mann, Anouilh andCamus. At the same time, his writing has been likened to the work ofConrad and Henry James. There have been studies of the "inter-national" theme in Andric's work, the confrontation of cultures, inrelation to James and Conrad. In addition to the material these


writers have in common, there are distinct similarities in the tone oftheir works: in the distance each stands from his material and theresulting irony and humour. For the rigour at the core of Andric'swork involves also his complete control of his material, with itscomplex but apparently impassive texture.

Andric has also drawn on his own Serbo-Croat tradition, and hehas written on several occasions of those writers to whom he feltparticularly close. These include a number of prose writers from thelate nineteenth century, and the Montenegrin poet Njegos. Aboveall, however, it is to the collector of Yugoslav oral literature, VukStefanovic Karadzic, that Andric most readily returns; to Karadzic'sextraordinary determination against great odds, his persistence, hiswholehearted devotion to the life of the people, their customs and allaspects of the manifestation of their culture, his perspicacity andliterary acumen which enabled him to select at once what was mostspecific and most universal in that culture; and his own lucid,objective but vivid style.

Andric began his literary activity writing poetry and criticismwithin a wholly European frame of reference. It was not long,however, before he turned definitively to his own local culture, to hisroots, to the "heritage of his forefathers", the oral traditionalliterature. The presence of this culture is not always immediatelyobvious in Andric's works, but where it is it accounts for theirparticular density and resonance.

A number of studies have been written concerned with variousaspects of the reflection of Yugoslav oral culture in Andric's work.Some deal with explicit references to songs and stories, givingexamples of direct quotations, particularly of proverbs. Some treatthe question of the influence of oral literature on Andric's style andnarrative procedure. Others are concerned with the particular natureof the legends which can be traced in his work and their origin in theoral tradition.

Perhaps the most vital aspect of this relationship is that in hisreferences to the oral literature of his countrymen, Andric is aboveall simply acknowledging a response to the human condition univer-sally manifested in the creation of legends, heroes, ballads and lyricsongs. When Andric speaks of "the truth that is contained inlegend", he is as interested in the "truth" itself as he is in the

Introduction 39

conditions in which its expression arose, as interested in the legend asin the circumstances that gave rise to it. Here, seeking with VukKaradzic the most universal statements which meet a profoundhuman need, Andric vividly illustrates the fact that, for all its localcolour, an individual culture can cross all national barriers. The othercrucial aspect of this relationship springs from Andric's concern withhistory. One of the most important dimensions of the oral culture is itsfunction as the expression of the people's interpretation of theirhistory, their view of themselves, their values and their particularexperience. In this narrower aspect of a national culture it is preciselythe differences between nations which are emphasized, and here thatthe barriers are built. In The Bridge on the Drina a perennial humanneed is manifested in the Visegrad children's references to the heroesof the ballads with which they grow up. The children of bothChristian and Moslem families are equally entranced by the ballads,and the heroes are equally real to them: dents in the road beside thebridge are known to have been made by the hoofprints of their hero'shorse. For the Christian children, however, the horse is that of theSerbian prince Marko, while for the Moslems it is that of Alija-Derzelez. Thus Andric identifies the fact that an individual culturecan both reinforce divisions between men and, at the same time, in itsbasic intention, can bridge them. The divisions are in the foregroundand cannot be resolved, but they are rendered insignificant by abroader perspective.

These roots of Andric's work bring us back to the idea that thoughtcannot be divorced from the immediacy of life. Understanding can beachieved only through the individual's own personal experience of aparticular reality. At the same time this is only one aspect of Andric'sexperience, a particularly vital and creative one certainly, but onewhich cannot be separated from all the many other disparateinfluences which conditioned his work.

Critics and literary historians continue to try to identify the decisiveinfluences in Andric's work, just as potential biographers endeavourto trace the shaping forces in his personal life. The last word should beleft to Andric himself:

I don't believe at all in decisive influences. A man grows, develops,reads, paints, writes, composes, some things attract him more,


some less, he is receptive to some things and resists others,consciously or unconsciously . . . It has sometimes happened thatI have gained immeasurably more at some concert than from ameeting with a writer I once greatly admired. And vice versa: Ihave sometimes gone to a concert happy to think I was going tohear a work which meant a great deal to me at one time, andreturned from the concert empty, dull. It was not that the workwas different, I was different, my mood was different, on oneoccasion I was quite tranquil and open, ready to respond, on theother I was like a closed book, inaccessible. And perhaps it was infact that other concert, for me apparently unsuccessful, that wasthe more significant for what I did that day, than the other whichremained as a treasured memory . . .

And when you ask me who has influenced me decisively, howcan I answer? That shop window with the books whose titles I didnot understand? Perhaps precisely that! Or that one single bookwhich was on my desk? Perhaps just that! . . . But, you see: itcould equally well have been Jules Verne and not Kierkegaardthat was on my table, and now you are imprisoned with that onesingle book which chance has thrust into your hands for a year,two years, you read it ten, twenty times. Can that writer and hisbook influence you? They must, but it is not the same if theinfluence is Kierkegaard's or Verne's . . . No, I really think thatthere cannot be a precise answer: when you embark on thisadventure of writing, then everything influences you. When I wasyoung, for instance, I particularly liked Leopardi. His poetryenchanted me. When I was starting to write I used to say tomyself: what is the use of writing when no one can say whatLeopardi said . . . And the way he said it. That love for Leopardiwas my secret . . . I studied in Cracow and I could say a great,great deal about how much I owe Polish literature; both Polishpoets and Polish novelists, that is my great, personal debt ofgratitude. Or, there is in me an exceptionally strong line ofconnection with Scandinavian writers: Strindberg, Hamsun,Selma Lagerlof, Ibsen . . . Or, how much I could say about whatit meant to me to get to know the work of some French orRussian, German, English, Spanish writers. As a student I readold Chinese poets in French and German translation. They moved

Introduction 41

me, both by their thoughtfulness and their warmth. Theysounded better to me in German. I don't know why of course: didit have to do with the spirit of the two languages; or perhaps it wasa question of which translator was better; or was it perhaps that Iwas more "at home" with German then - in any case thoseGerman translations gave me enormous pleasure. They made mewant to see China and I did not miss the opportunity when it arose. . . But then, you see, when I was in Stockholm years later Ispoke in French . . .

All of that - the little shop window with the books, the book inprison, Leopardi, Chinese verses, Scandinavians and Poles,French, German and Russian writers - it is all just one possibleaspect of the story of influences. How could it be possible toextract from all of that, and far more that has not been men-tioned, something that should be called - a decisive influence? Isimply do not know and am not sure that I would even know howto say it. The reason is very mundane: when you read good writersextraordinary things sometimes happen to you - you suddenly feelthat the writer you are reading is talking about something that hasbeen smouldering buried somewhere within you and that yourealize in an astonishing way that you are not alone, that someoneelse has been troubled by what is disturbing you; that you havenot been abandoned, that someone else has been hurt andtormented by what is hurting you now and over which you aretormenting yourself. That is at the same time support, hope, andsolace.53

First literary allegiances

This is the broad context in which Andric's work should be viewed.As he grew as a man and developed as a writer, he tended to work inincreasing isolation, with the many various influences on him actingbeneath the surface. He took no part in the literary groupings inYugoslavia between the wars: Expressionist, Surrealist, or thevarious shades of left-oriented writing. There was only one period inhis life when he was wholly involved with a group of writers and thatwas as a very young man, when he was a prominent member of theYoung Bosnia movement. But the experience of these formative


years was of particular importance in his emotional and intellectualdevelopment and should therefore be considered in some detail.

Every generation of men has its own illusion about civilization;some believe they are helping to stir it up to a blaze, and othersthat they are witnessing its extinction. In fact, it is constantlyflaring up and smouldering and being extinguished, depending onthe position and angle from which we observe it. This generation,which was now discussing philosophical, social and politicalquestions on the bridge, under the stars, above the water, wasmerely richer in illusions; otherwise it was similar in every way toothers. It too had the feeling that it was both lighting the first firesof a new civilization and extinguishing the last flames of anotherwhich was burning itself out. The only thing that could be saidabout these young people in particular was that for a long timethere had not been a generation which had dreamed and talkedmore about life, pleasure and freedom, and which had less of life,suffered more, was imprisoned and perished in greater numbersthan this generation was about to suffer, be imprisoned andperish. But in those summer days of 1913 there were only bold butvague intimations. It all seemed like an exciting new game on theancient bridge which glowed white in the moonlight of those Julynights, clean, young and unchanging, but perfectly beautiful andstrong, stronger than everything time could bring and peopleinvent or do.54

In these words from The Bridge on the Drina Andric describes hisown generation on the eve of the First World War. This was thegeneration that formed the "Young Bosnia" movement. It is moreappropriate to talk in terms of a generation, for the movement itselfwas amorphous and fragmented, although spontaneous, active andwidespread, involving young people from every kind of backgroundand reflecting all shades of opinion from the vaguely liberal to theradical revolutionary. It is difficult not to view the participants in theYoung Bosnia movement with hindsight, to see all their actions asleading systematically to the First World War. That has indeed beenthe position of much of the voluminous literature examining thecauses of the War and identifying the responsibility for it. But whilemany of the young men concerned were increasingly impatient with

Introduction 43

words and favoured action, no one could have foreseen the repercus-sions of the pistol shot fired by one of the youngest members of themovement. An article written by one of the Young Bosnian leaders,Vladimir Gacinovic, in 1915, expresses their typical response.Speaking of Gavrilo Princip, he writes: "It never occurred to myyoung friend that his heroic bullet would provoke the present worldwar. And, believe me, when I read the various reports of it, my headreels with the appalling thought: did we, really, start all this?"55

In order to try to understand how Ivo Andric came to be activelyinvolved in the Young Bosnia movement, it is necessary to considerthe circumstances in which it came into being.

The lands which make up present-day Yugoslavia had beendivided for centuries under several foreign powers; the Turks in theeast, the Venetians on the coast and the Habsburg Monarchy in thewest. The Venetians had begun to settle on the coast in the eleventhcentury, the Turks had arrived in the Balkan peninsula in thefourteenth century, and the Habsburgs, with their acceptance of theCroatian crown, in 1527. In addition the Croatian Lands hadformed part of the medieval kingdom of Hungary from 1102 to 1526,when the Turks overran Hungary. If one considers the crucialcultural divisions between the various regions - the OrthodoxChristian areas in the east, now dominated by Islam, the stronglyMoslem central region of Bosnia and the Catholic west - then thescale of the obstacles to unification of the South Slav lands can beclearly seen as immense. For the Serbs and Croats - divided betweenthe eastern and western areas, and spread fairly equally throughBosnia - formed, despite all these barriers, one single linguisticcommunity. The nineteenth century brought many changes, settingin motion processes that were eventually to lead to the formation ofthe new Europe after 1918. Ottoman power had been steadilywaning, the Venetian Republic had ceased to exist and the HabsburgMonarchy was seriously weakened by both external and internalpressures. In 1804 and 1813 there were rebellions in Serbia whichled to the foundation of a virtually independent principality in 1830.

Conditions in Bosnia towards the end of the nineteenth centurywere wretched, and only aggravated by the Austrian occupation of1878. In The Bridge on the Drina Andric describes the rapid changeswhich followed the arrival of the Austrians, and their apparently


frenzied activity which was quite incomprehensible to the localpopulation, accustomed to the relatively uneventful years of Turkishrule. The material changes brought about by rapid industrializationnot only meant a still heavier burden of taxation, but gradually alsohad a profound effect on the mentality of the people of Bosnia. Theirpoverty obliged thousands to seek work abroad, notably in Germanyand America. It was said that some Bosnian villages sent half theirmale population to work abroad, while the other half served in theAustrian army. Many previously prosperous villages were virtuallydeserted. These migrant workers returned from abroad more criti-cal, less passive, and they offered a ready response to the leadershipof the young people educated in the few Bosnian schools and theuniversities of Zagreb, Vienna, Prague and Graz. Together, the newgeneration of Bosnians, both peasants and educated young people,organized groups in the villages: agricultural and commercialco-operatives, gymnastics societies and temperance groups. Thestudents were anxious to share their learning, they organized coursesin medicine, geography and political economics, opened readingrooms and ran newspapers.

Andric describes the effect of these developments on the smalltown of Visegrad:

Parallel with the rise in prices and that incomprehensible butobtrusive game of rising and falling bonds, dividends and thevalue of money, people began increasingly to talk about politics.

Until then the people of the town had been concerned exclu-sively with what was close and familiar to them, with theirearnings, their amusements, generally only with questions relatingto their family and their parish, town or religious community, butalways directly and narrowly, not looking far either ahead or back.Now, however, in the course of conversation, increasingly oftenquestions arose which lay somewhere further off, beyond thiscircle. Religious and national parties - Serbian and Moslem - werefounded in Sarajevo, and immediately afterwards sub-committeeswere set up. Reading rooms and choral societies were founded,first Serbian, then Moslem and, finally, Jewish. Boys from thesecondary schools and students from university in Vienna andPrague began to arrive home for the vacations, bringing new

Introduction 45

books and pamphlets and a new way of expressing themselves. Bytheir example they showed the young townspeople that they neednot always silently conceal their true thoughts as the older peoplehad always believed and maintained. New religious and nationalorganizations sprang up on a broader base, with bolder amis; thenworkers' organizations also appeared. It was then that the word"strike" was heard for the first time in the town. The youngapprentices grew serious. In the evenings, on the bridge, they helddiscussions among themselves which would have been incompre-hensible to others and exchanged little paper-bound pamphlets,with titles like "What Is Socialism?", "Eight Hours of Work,Eight of Rest and Eight of Education", "The Aims and Directionof the World Proletariat".

There were many townspeople who remained cautiously silentor repressed such innovations and daring thoughts and words. Butthere were still more, particularly among the younger, poorerpeople with time on their hands, who welcomed them all as joyfulindications which corresponded to their inner needs, suppressedand kept silent until then, and which brought into their lives thatgrand and exciting element which had so far been lacking. As theyread the speeches and articles, protests and memoranda of thereligious and party organizations, each of them had the feelingthat something was being disentangled within him, that hishorizons were being broadened, his ideas liberated and hisenergies linked with other people and energies far away, aboutwhich he had never thought until now. Now people began to lookat each other from a new angle. It seemed to them that life wasbecoming more expansive, richer, that the limits of what wasinadmissible and impossible were being moved back and that newvistas and possibilities were being opened up.

In fact, they did not have anything new even now, nor couldthey see anything better, but they were able to look beyond theirimmediate small-town present to have an exciting illusion ofbreadth and strength. Their habits did not change, their way oflife and the forms of their dealings with each other remained thesame; it was only that arguments, bold words and a new way ofconversing entered into the ancient ritual of sitting idly overcoffee, tobacco and brandy. People began to separate and gather


together, reject and attract each other according to new standardsand on a new basis, with the force of old passions and ancientimpulses.56

It was this atmosphere of profound general change in the mental-ity of the people as a whole that gave the young people directlyinvolved in the Young Bosnia movement such a heady sense of theeffectiveness of their activities. These activities, while enthusiastic,were sporadic and not sufficiently well organized to be sustained.Nevertheless, at one time or another each region had its ownperiodical publication, designed to cater for the needs and interestsof the people, which contributed to an increasingly widespreadsense of community and national responsibility. And the single-minded dedication of the leaders of the movement was certainlyimpressive.

Apart from their endeavours to broaden the horizons of thepeople, the movement's activities chiefly consisted of meeting insmall groups. There were at this period large numbers of youngpeople throughout the Habsburg Monarchy who belonged to secretsocieties representing various shades of opinion. They gatheredmainly to read, to compile their pamphlets and newspapers, toexchange ideas. Literature played a vital role in shaping the ideasand organization of the movement. Almost all the Young Bosnianstried their hand at some literary activity, in the belief that arevolution in the spiritual and intellectual life of individuals mustprecede all radical social and political change. These young peopleset to work energetically to translate all the most popular contem-porary writers, notably Scandinavian, particularly Strindberg, butalso many German, Belgian, Russian, French, English and Italianworks. They were remarkably effective in circulating books, con-sidering the generally low level of culture in Bosnia.

Sarajevo was a natural focal point in the atmosphere followingthe annexation of 1908. This atmosphere of resentment was height-ened by events in Croatia, where in 1910 the Governor, Cuvaj,appointed by Budapest, had initiated a period of unconstitutionalrule. There was an attempt on Cuvaj's life in 1912. A commentmade at the time by Ivo Andric in his diary epitomizes the growingimpatience of the movement's adherents:

Introduction 47

Today Lukic tried to assassinate Cuvaj. How splendid it is that thesecret threads of action and rebellion are being drawn together.How joyfully I foresee days of great deeds . . . My life is passingwithout the blessing of goodness and sacrifice. But I love the good.Long live those who die on the pavements, unconscious withanger and gunpowder, smarting from our common shame! Longlive those who, withdrawn and silent in their dark rooms, preparethe rebellion and constantly think up new actions!57

Serbian and Croatian students in Vienna decided that they shouldform joint societies to respond effectively to the situation. In 1911 agroup of radical schoolboys and students in Sarajevo founded the"Croato-Serb or Serbo-Croat or Yugoslav Progressive Youth Organi-zation", with the nineteen-year-old Ivo Andric as its first president.Gavrilo Princip was among the first to join this new society.

Andric's involvement in the progressive groups of his time wasinevitable. However temperamentally unsuited he was to violentrevolutionary action, it was impossible that a young man of hisseriousness, with his strong moral and patriotic sense, could haveavoided being caught up in the ideals and activities of his contem-poraries. Above all, a common passion for books brought'the youngmen together, and this passion dominated Andric's life as a school-boy. Their ideals were based to a considerable extent on the writingsof the Russian Positivists, just as their programme of education forthe people reflected similar activities in the Russian and other Slavlands towards the end of the nineteenth century. Some of these ideaswere also reinforced by a selective reading of philosophers — bothClassical and contemporary - whose views were promoted in thepages of the movement's various journals.

Andric's intellectual education, in the specific, drastic circum-stances of his youth, was intense and rapid. His reading, writing,and the discussions he had with his contemporaries were given aspecial urgency by the extremity of his situation: on the one handthere was the unsatisfactory social and political situation of Bosniain the early twentieth century, and on the other the appalling scale ofthe cataclysm which appeared to the young men of Andric'sgeneration to be, at least in part, a consequence of their efforts toremedy the circumstances around them.


We shall probably never know the extent to which Andric'sfeeling of responsibility for the events of the First World Warcontributed to the guilt which he describes frequently in his writingsas one of the essential experiences of his life. It is likely that thisfeeling of guilt was far deeper, an irrational reaction, a temperamen-tal disquiet, aggravated by his experience of Catholic dogma.Nevertheless, it was probably reinforced by the consequences of hisone venture into direct political activity.

Similarly, Andric's sense of isolation in the world was absolute,almost mystical. We may also assume that it was intensified by hisexperience of imprisonment. Andric was twenty-two when he wasarrested. Never particularly strong, he became ill with tuberculosisduring his imprisonment and spent part of the War in a hospital fornon-combatants. These circumstances all combined to reinforce thesense of isolation, the fear, disquiet and guilt which colour so manyof Andric's writings.

How early Andric began to suspect that he was not temperamen-tally suited to the life of an active revolutionary is also a matter forspeculation. He has left an eloquent account of his realization,however, which is included in the collection of prose poems,Anxieties. "Story from Japan" is written in the form of a parable.After the successful coup by a group of 350 conspirators against theEmpress Au-Ung (Austria-Hungary?), which included the poetMori Ipo, when the group met for their first ceremonial assembly,Mori Ipo was not among them. A slave was sent with a sedan chair tobring him; instead the slave returned with a letter:

Mori Ipo sends greetings to his comrades, the conspirators, ontheir parting!

I thank you, comrades, for our common suffering and faith andour victory, and I ask you to forgive me that I am unable also toshare with you in the victory as I shared in the struggle. But poets- unlike other beings - are loyal only in misfortune; they abandonthose who are doing well. We poets are born for struggle, we arepassionate hunters, but we do not partake of the booty. Thebarrier that divides me from you is narrow and invisible, but is notthe blade of a sword also thin and yet it is deadly? I could not crossit to join you without detriment to my soul, for we can stand

Introduction 49

everything except power. That is why I am leaving you, comradeconspirators, and I am going to see whether there is anywhere anidea which has not been put into practice or an aspiration whichhas not been realized. And may you govern with reason and goodfortune! But should any misfortune or trial ever beset our Empireof the Seven Islands and should there be a need for struggle andfor solace in the struggle, then please call on me.

Here the president of the council, who was a little deaf, stoppedreading and with the impatience of an old man, said with somedispleasure:

"What misfortune could possibly befall the Empire under the justand enlightened rule of the 350?"

All the members of the council nodded; the older ones smileddisdainfully and pityingly: What possible misfortune! The readingwas not continued; they began to debate the law on import andexcise duties.

Only the head of the nation's scholars read the poet's message tothe end, but to himself, and then he folded it up and deposited itin the archive of the former Empress.58

The sense of responsibility to his countrymen ascribed here to theJapanese poet remained with Andric all his life. It dictated his choiceof profession and drove him, however reluctantly, to involve himselfin certain limited ways in public life after the Second World War.

"It is quite pointless to describe a writer, it distracts the reader's attentionfrom the real things."59

The preceding endeavour to place Andric in his context, geographi-cal, cultural and historical, can do no more than present a number ofexternal facts. For Andric the "real" things were the life of his mind,his creative work. Consequently the experience of his diplomatic andpublic life is only indirectly reflected in his work. His search is forthe patterns and perennial truths underlying the surface forms ofhuman existence, for the metaphysical dimensions of experience.Nor are his characters neutral actors whose lives are confined totheir public role. Andric's response to the world is essentially


emotional, for all the restraint and apparent objectivity of his prose.It is this strong lyrical element, combined with the broad perspectiveof his works, that gives Andric's portrayal of people in history, andhis evocation of the myths and legends by which man orders hisexperience, that immediacy which is his hallmark.

One of Andric's favoured literary forms is lyrical reflective prose.There are several essays and numerous shorter pieces which areoften virtually prose poems. These fall into two very broad categor-ies. The majority are statements which formulate a general conclu-sion about the nature of human behaviour and existence. The othersare observations of the surface detail of human experience. At theirbest, they have the aphoristic quality of statements which promise toreveal essential truths. This comes on the one hand from their rootsin the accumulated wisdom of the people as it is expressed in folkliterature, and on the other from an affinity with the Europeantradition of reflective prose, in particular the work of such writers asMarcus Aurelius, Pascal and Montaigne. Passages of this kind occuralso in Andric's fiction and contribute to its quality of a generalizedstatement.

A clue to this tendency of Andric's work can be found in one ofthe longer pieces of reflective prose. These tend to focus onimportant symbols in his writing - "Bridges", "Faces", "Sun". Oneis devoted to "Wine", and includes the words: "Everything which Ipraise in these words has once passed through my senses and myconsciousness, pleased me and strengthened me and left me the ideaof myself as the only reality."60 This is, then, the starting point of allAndric's writing, as it is the point at which the circle of his thinkingis closed. "Ever since I can remember", Andric once wrote, "I feelthat I have been working on and preparing always the same work.Parts of this work are published and acquire the name of 'story','poem', 'essay'."61

The divisions between the various genres in Andric's work areoften very slight. He is concerned with the essential features of thehuman condition, which he approaches from a variety of differentangles and perspectives. To borrow the image on which the form ofthe novella Devil's Yard is based, his works construct more or lesselaborate circles around a nucleus which is the individual confront-ing his own identity in the flux of human destiny.

2

Verse

First poems, Ex Ponto, Anxieties

Andric's first published works were poems and he continued to writeverse intermittently all his life, although much of it was notpublished until after his death.

His first poems appeared in the context of the Young Bosniamovement. The writing of its members is in marked contrast to theirrobust active personalities. For, while they were committed toviolent revolutionary action and their essays reflect their belief in itseffectiveness, their imaginative works are coloured by the prevailingtone of European literature. In their critical writings they called, astheir contemporaries throughout Europe were doing, for revolution-ary modern modes in all areas of life, from love to poetry. Theyfound that this modernity was hard to achieve in practice, however,and surrendered to the fashionable literary mode, a Neo-Romanticmelancholy which was well enough suited to their dispiritingenvironment.

The poems Andric published before the First World War arevirtually indistinguishable in tone from much of what his contem-poraries were writing. Nevertheless, it is probably true to say that inhis case the role of the political activist, however sincerely he playedit at the time, was fundamentally unsuited to him. By contrast,however, the prevailing melancholy seemed to match his owntemperamental response to the world.

These early poems point in no particular direction, beyondestablishing the free verse form of virtually all Andric's poetry and atendency to a mournful self-pity which sometimes threatens hispersonal statements.

The prose poems written during the War, however, represent apersonal confession and cannot be considered merely the reflection


of a literary vogue. Ex Ponto (the title refers to Ovid's account of hisexile on the Black Sea) was published in 1918, Anxieties in 1920,when Ex Ponto was also reprinted. Thereafter Andric refused toallow them to be included in any of the collections of his workspublished before his death. He rejected them because they seemed tohim too raw and too intimate, unprocessed reactions to the circum-stances of his life in the War years and of no artistic value.Nevertheless, they are important since they contain ideas andthemes which recur in his later works.

The strong emotional colouring, particularly of Ex Ponto, wastoned down in Andric's later prose poems and verse but their form, acombination of aphoristic statements and longer reflective passages,continued to appeal to him.

Ex Ponto and Anxieties record Andric's emotional reaction to thecircumstances of his early life and the development of a number ofthemes around the central paradox of his personality and his work.One of the last passages in Ex Ponto expresses this paradoxsuccinctly: "Wherever I look there is poetry, whatever I touchbrings pain."1

These few words could stand as an epigraph to all of Andric'swork. Its abundance of stories, characters, observations, comments,is its first striking aspect, coloured by a clear-sighted acceptance ofthe essentially tragic nature of the human condition. In Ex Pontodespair predominates, but the work also traces the growth ofremarkable strength.

Andric was twenty-two when he was arrested and imprisoned.This fact alone might be enough to account for much of the tone ofthe volume. Andric has said that at that time, in Sarajevo, it wasknown exactly who could and who could not be arrested. Onlycriminals went to prison.

To be in prison seemed to me then - the end of everything. Theend of life: you wait only for the moment when they will come totake you off to the execution yard; you expected nothing else . . .We had no experience. When I found myself in my cell, I thoughtonly of death. I remember cell No. 115 and my inexpressible fear. . . The door opens, squeaking slightly, slams, you hear the key,and you are left alone. Alone, and with you your fear. Immense.

Verse 53

Whatever you start thinking about, every thought ends with - fear. . . I found myself constantly thinking about the sun. Where wasit? Did it exist?2

Andric already felt isolated from his fellow-students, not quitesharing their revolutionary zeal. The little he has said about hisrelationship with the Catholic God of his childhood suggests that hefelt equally cut off from Him. Here, then, was a young man whoseexperience of the world had already been intense and had forced aburden of responsibility on to his immature shoulders. In prison hewas left in solitary confinement for several weeks.

Some years after his experience Andric was able to give itexpression in several sketches describing a young man's imprison-ment and his obsession with the sunlight falling through his barredwindow.

In the introduction to Ex Ponto written by Andric's friend NikoBartulovic we are given a glimpse of the young writer's personality asseen from the outside, which confirms the impression conveyed bythe text:

As he says himself, Ivo Andric was already a little tired when hecame into the world. He attributes this to atavism. The last maledescendant of an old Sarajevo family, physically delicate and frail,with the thoughtful eyes of a dreamer, he seemed really to feel inhis own person the weariness of many generations. Apart fromthat, you can see no trace of his Bosnian surroundings in him inany form, and he maintains for precisely that reason that his wholeheritage has been condensed into the traditional Bosnian inclina-tion to melancholy. The songs of the area he comes from, with alltheir soft minor-key intonation, are nothing but one great sorrowand unspecified longing . . .3

Melancholy, then, is the keynote of Andric's temperament. Itsuggests immediately isolation, introspection and, in these earlypoems, a Neo-Romantic exaltation of the insights granted by such atemperament:

The sickly thoughts and dark forebodings of the melancholy havea terrible accuracy, however absurd and misguided they appear tothe healthy.


The melancholy are like the aspen, which trembles when othertrees do not even feel the breeze. Like an actor who casts a shadowon to the stage while he is still standing in the wings; thus eventsappear in the dreams and forebodings of the melancholy.

The centre of a healthy man's thoughts is life and the questionsit raises, but in the melancholy it is death and its secrets . . ,4

This response to the world, although later expressed in lesshackneyed terms, was probably conditioned by a combination ofphysical attributes, childhood experiences - including the mournfulsongs of his native land - and the extreme circumstances of hisexperience of the War and of imprisonment. He continued to see thetrue reality underlying all appearances in these dark colours. Inmany of his later works, Andric describes characters who are forvarious reasons more able than their fellow-men to apprehend whathe regards as the true nature of reality, because they are somehowoutside surface forms and distractions. A recurring theme is theinsight granted by a sudden change of perspective. Given itsimportance in Andric's work as a whole, it is legitimate to assumethat, while his reaction to his imprisonment was conditioned bylatent tendencies, the experience itself was decisive. Not only didthis experience set in motion a number of emotional reactions to theworld, but it also determined a symbolic vision of the world itself asa prison, a vision hinted at in various works and whose full value isexpressed in Devil's Yard. This stock Romantic metaphor thusacquires substance in Andric's work.

The notion of a change in perspective is described in the openingpassage of Ex Ponto:

Has it ever happened to you that, thrown off the rails, you bidfarewell to the everyday and are swept off, borne by a terriblewhirlwind, appalled, as one under whose feet the ground isslipping away?

Has it happened to you that everything is taken from you - andwhat cannot be taken away from a man? - that a heavy, hideoushand is placed on your soul, taking from you the joy and serenityof a free spirit; and that your very courage, which remains as thelast desperate gift of destiny, is taken from you and you are left adumb, callow slave?5

Verse 55

The High Romantic tone of this passage reflects at once Andric'syouth and the exalted spirit in which he and his Young Bosniacontemporaries steeped themselves in literature.

The experience conveyed in these dark colours to the young manin his solitary cell tended to crystallize into several specific emotions,and those remained the central categories of human experience inmany of Andric's works. The dominant psychological states areisolation - from men and God - fear, guilt, sin, suffering. Thesestates are experienced within an all-encompassing absolute silence.

In the midst of this despair, there are sudden moments of clarityand "light". Nowhere in this work, or in any of Andric's later works,is there any attempt to explain or identify the precise nature of this"light". It is a recognition of the spontaneous irrational energy of thehuman spirit, the will to survive and to overcome all odds.

The fact that these moments of light were granted to Andric doesnot mean that from then on he was able steadily to work his way outof his despair. Ex Ponto is above all a record of the fluctuations ofhuman mood, the passing strengths and weaknesses of the spirit.Andric denies himself any positive system, which would remainconstant despite the vagaries of transient mood. On the contrary, itis precisely in recognizing and accepting these fluctuations thatAndric finds a source of hope. At the beginning of the volume thenatural world is included in the cold hostility that surrounds theyoung man, but as the work proceeds, Nature is increasingly asource of solace. Partly for specific manifestations, sun in particular,and snow; but more because the fluctuations of the human spirit areseen as in harmony with the changes in the natural world. Andric isacutely affected by light and dark, for example, and acknowledgesthat his reactions to the world are quite different in the daylight andat night.

Increasingly, Andric's apprehension of harmony is expressed inthe notion of a constant ebb and flow:

There are moments when my soul swells like a wave and breaks inme and my twenty-three years raise their voice and my wild desirebeats its brow against the narrow circle of fate like a bird againstglass.

There are moments when, in the calm which comes automati-


cally from misfortune, I glimpse the need for denial and suffering,when grateful for all the joys of life that once were - I see that itwas necessary for them too to have an end, and that it should havebeen an end like this.

There are moments when I burn calmly like a sacrificial torchwhich has just been brought into the temple.6

There is, then, no steady development in Ex Ponto. Despairalternates with moments of peace and light, lamentation on thewriter's solitude fluctuates with frustration following unsatisfactoryattempts at communication with his fellow-men. Out of thiskaleidoscopic collection of statements a pattern does neverthelessbegin to emerge.

The outside world is hostile: "Remorselessly rigid and motionless,the mountains look down from the cloudy heights. The sky is high,inflexible. The earth hard, merciless . . ."7 There is a sense ofunreality and falsehood about the writer's dealings with the worldand his fellow-men:

I have returned. I went again among people. With all the passionof a soul welling over, I celebrated my return among living people.And now look: how numb and tired I am. Loud pleasure is aviolent intoxicant, a poison which starts to act in solitude. Theabandoned room is reproachfully silent and lonely thoughtsappear, like offended friends who pretend not to know me. I havereturned, but it would have been better if I had not gone.8

Words, the common currency of human communication, can bemisleading and dangerous: "We ought to be far more careful withthe words we speak . . . If words were only as short-lived as thesound that expresses them! But often they live for years, likeshameful wounds they hurt and sting and poison a man's life."9

"The longer you spend alone and keep silent about yourself, themore shallow and foolish your neighbour's talk becomes."10

What emerges above all from Ex Ponto is the fact that Andric hadthe spiritual and emotional resources not only to withstand isolation,but actually to grow and be strengthened by it: "Do not regret yoursolitude and the silence that is around you. Perhaps fate is on yourside, perhaps it is someone's ancient prayer that envelops you with

Verse 57

quietness as a protection, perhaps in your silence words lie buriedthat would have brought disquiet and unhappiness."11 "The lastexpression of all and the simplest form of all endeavours is - silence.I have fallen in love with it for my whole lifetime, and when my lifepasses, silence, my good mother, will place her pale hands on myeyes and this whole piteous story will sink into the darkness, as abrief incomprehensible sound dies in silence."12

The silence and isolation of Andric the writer are, however, farfrom blank and empty. They are peopled with ideas and memorieswhich seem to retain their purity in the quiet concentration ofsolitude.

For two days now they have not taken me out even for that onehour of exercise, because it has been raining incessantly. It seemsto me that the damp is seeping endlessly into my cell and fallingover my face and hands like a sticky sediment. My bed-cover issharp and icy-cold, my food tastes of tin plates, and my cell hasthat indescribable smell of a confined space where a man breathesand lives, without change or air. But here, behind my eyelids - if Ionly shut my eyes - lives all the greatness of life and all the beautyof the world. Whatever has once just touched my eyes, lips andhands is all alive in my mind and bright against the darkbackground of this suffering. The luxury and beauty of life liveindestructibly within me . . ,13

It is not only with his own thoughts and memories that the writer'shead is filled. In his isolation he also has intimations of an ultimateharmony in which his life has a place. For Andric, life is always farbroader than the immediate present; it is a perpetual process inwhich individual human lives play an infinitesimal part. It is inimmediate human contact, so often warped by hatred and malice,that real fear lies. Andric's growing preference for solitude and hisreadiness to confront the meaninglessness of individual existencebecome a source of comfort and strength. His isolation from hisfellow-men is in any case only superficial. He withdraws from theimperfect communication of daily discourse in order to be closer tothe timeless currents of human existence.

One passage in Ex Ponto suggests the level of human communica-tion that was to be Andric's particular concern:


And look, as always in moments of the greatest trials, I see that inthe depths of my soul, under the hard crust and grey sediment ofempty words and distorted concepts which so soon betray, therelives the eternal, unconscious and blessed heritage of my fore-fathers, who laid their bodies in ancient scattered graveyards, andtheir simple and robust virtues in the foundations of our souls.14

Ex Ponto describes the growth of a resolute human spirit,tempered by its exposure to despair. Each statement of despair, outof which life, nevertheless, emerges and endures, is proof of hisability to withstand it. His strength comes from an identification ofthe individual personality with the changing and yet constant naturalworld, and through a merging of individual suffering, with thetimeless human condition. It demands a patient, clear-eyed, broadview of existence, which can never be completely obscured byimmediate pain. The conclusion of Ex Ponto expresses this view intypical form:

Epilogue.You are much alone and often silent, my son, you are beset bydreams, exhausted by journeys of the spirit. Your body is bentand your face pale, your eyelids lowered and your voice like therasp of a prison door. Go out into the summer day, my son!

"What did you see in the summer day, my son?"I saw that the earth is strong and the sky eternal, but man is

weak and short-lived."What did you see, my son, in the summer day?"I saw that love is brief, and hunger eternal."What did you see, my son, in the summer day?"I saw that this life is a painful affair which consists in an unequal

exchange of sin and unhappiness, that to live means to pile illusionon illusion.

"Do you wish to sleep, my son?"No, father, I am going out to live.15

While much of Anxieties is similar to Ex Ponto, there is a certaindevelopment; in part in form and in part in atmosphere. It would bemisleading to say that this slim volume represents a cut-and-driedstatement of Andric's thinking, but it does provide indications of its

Verse 59

general direction. The greater length of the pieces - compared tothose of Ex Ponto - suggests in itself a tranquillity, an impression ofthoughts gradually formed.

Passages from Anxieties were first published in 1919 and the fullversion appeared in 1920. The complete work seems to suggest adegree of adjustment to the world; the prevalent tone of despair ofEx Ponto has gone. By 1920 Andric was fully involved in the literarylife of Zagreb in the newly-formed Yugoslav state. These werecircumstances far removed from imprisonment in a country devas-tated by war.

The first seven pieces, which form a separate section of the work,are an account of Andric's confrontation with the God of hischildhood. Andric's early experience was intimately linked with theCatholic Church. We can assume that the simple homes in which helived would have reflected the typical devout humble ChristianityAndric portrays in many of his accounts of village and town lifeamong the Christian community of Bosnia. We can only speculateabout the particular religious atmosphere of Andric's home life. Butwe do know something of his important and fruitful associationswith Franciscan monks while he was interned in Bosnia.

There are many sympathetic portraits of Catholic monks inAndric's work, and two cycles of stories revolve around twomemorable members of the Franciscan order. From these stories wecan gain an impression of the respect Andric felt for their vocation,and at the same time a clear idea of his awareness that the personalityof the individual monk and his effectiveness were only in partenhanced by his commitment, and not conditioned by it. On thewhole the impression given is that, with rare exceptions, religiouszeal of any denomination acts as a barrier between the individual andthe true nature of the world, blinding him to the truth and shieldinghim from harsh reality.

Andric's philosophy is communicated increasingly in the form of akind of Pantheism, as illustrated by the the third passage of this firstsection of Anxieties, ostensibly centred on the idea of God:

Everything that exists here is condemned to a battle without end.The sea and the rocks, the seed in the earth and the wind andanimals as well as men.


Light and dark follow each other and winds alternate withsilences, but the battle does not cease to be fought. In the shadowof a vast secret and the troubled dream that every being dreamsand spreads out over himself, you can hear constantly in the heartof the earth the rhythm of life hammering between pain and joy.And, in the midst of that din, its silence is dreadful.

The wind rocks the pine bough. All things shiver and freeze inthe prison of laws.

God is the night in which our destiny lies like something quietand small.

From the place where human thought drowns and is extin-guished, the solitude of all living things spreads out in a circle inappalling waves.16

Andric's God, or, at least, his conception of eternity, comes to beseen as inherent in the natural world, in its constant changeability,the rhythm of these changes, and in its endurance, despite andbeyond all apparent transience.

The words which express this apprehension will recur as a basicformula at various points in Andric's works: "Around me are forests,which know only one commandment: that they should grow, andonly one requirement: that they should die . . ,"17 The lessonAndric appears to be driving himself to learn in this section ofAnxieties is the patience to wait until the moods of despair havepassed, the storm is quiet and he can once again be receptive to thepositive forces of life, the forces of light and growth - the flow,rather than the ebb. Whereas in Ex Ponto his youthful reaction was acry of despair, in this volume the despair is often dominated by aquiet realization that it will pass. And whereas the stern anddemanding God of his childhood was unable to bring him comfort,he turns now outside himself to aspects of the natural world thatseem to him to embody his developing apprehension of eternity.

An indication of this progression is provided by the first passage ofthe third section, entitled "Mountains". It is an act of devotion to thewriter's new God. It is worth quoting in full as an explicit statementof faith.

Mountains in the distance, crowned with snow, who take Com-munion with the sun, for you alone is there a song left within me.

Verse 61

You are the effort of the earth - the only worthwhile effort -towards the sky and height.

When I think of the rosy glow of the heights, I am filled withpeace.

I know, fiery lilies and silence bloom there. Or the cautioustrack of a wild animal melts in the snow. And should a painappear, it is carried off by changes as a fallen tree is by a river.There death is: scattered feathers, clean, whitened bones andblack, fertile soil.

From those mountains these mornings come.This is a morning when I, who have no gods, fall and bow down

to you, high mountains, where the silence of death and life iswarm and fertile like the silence of two pairs of lips in a kiss.

Freed from troubled evening thoughts of stars and distances,and having trodden all the paths which smart in the memory, I falldown before you, peaks of the earth where reigns the distant andincomprehensible harmony of the elements.

A white silence to which God has not descended, nor manreached.

Deep snow, with the shadow of dark spruce and the fullmeasure of time and its soundless laws! Winged snow, with theform of a star and a human eye, traveller who does not hurry andwho has faith in time and forms and the possibilities that awaithim, you are this morning for me in the bright distance like a deityone invokes. And the peaks of this earth where I suffer are nonethe less dearer to me than some unknown distant sky whichcaused me to be born weary.

High mountains, your image in my eyes which mourn transi-ence is more faithful and enduring than everything that has cometo me in the world, because everything that has passed throughmy hands vanishes in the disquiet to which all things and all menare condemned. I stretch out my empty hands to you; and, see,the shadow of the day which lies on them is shortened anddeluded.18

Mountains, then, embody an idea of permanence which is animage of the patience a man must nurture in himself to triumph overthe disquiet which is the fundamental quality of human life.


As in Ex Ponto, the writer ends with an expression of thisharmony through communication with his fellow-men. The impulseis described in typically humble terms:

When I saw how bright the mists were in the distance and when Iheard what the woods were saying with their face which is foreverchanging and the mountain peaks which had lost their greennessand beauty but stood still, bare and eternally the same. When Isaw the relentless but dignified march of light and shadow over thevalley below me and caught the sound of their voice in my ownblood, I was afraid in the face of the mystery and astonished at thepower of discovery given to man. -1 realized at once that I wouldbe a poor speaker and an unreliable witness. - I stopped for amoment and was small and alone with the inexpressible sadness ofbright, short days, which only man knows. God and the worldwere silent.19

While these two youthful works are of little artistic worthcompared to Andric's mature writing, they are nevertheless a humandocument of value. They present a personal struggle, in verydemanding circumstances, out of which the writer emerges trium-phant. The strength so acquired enabled him to turn beyondhimself, to enter into and conjure up innumerable human lives, bothpast and contemporary, portraying them with singular sympathyand vigour.

I waged my battle with the winds and the cold alone. I found aconfidential word with the sap in blades of grass. I suffered greatlywhile I got to know all the strengths and demands of my body andthe warm self-awareness of all the lives around me. I orderedexactly my relationship with the movements, phenomena andchanges of everything around me, I battled until everything hadcome to love me as a fearless stranger, who did not think ofhimself. Clouds, woods, springs, animals and rocks filled myconsciousness, but I never forgot the human face, the wonderfulhuman face, lit up by the glow of reason and the sadness onlyhumans know because of all that they can see.

Behind all my bitter words is always hidden the human facewith its desire for happiness.20

Verse 63

Verse, 1918-73

From time to time, in his constant exposure and response to theworld, Andric would come upon a subject or an experience which hefelt he could express only in the form of a poem. This happened lessand less frequently; only one or two poems survive from any oneyear after 1920. Some of them were published in periodicals, butmost were preserved in a file found among the writer's papers afterhis death and labelled All my verse and prose poems. These, togetherwith all the published poems, were subsequently collected andpublished under the title of one of them: What I Dream and WhatHappens To Me. On the whole these poems show the weakest aspectof Andric's writing. They tend to be self-conscious, often prosaic,and occasionally they contain a hint of the self-pity which canthreaten a writer of Andric's introspective melancholy disposition.

The verse shows no abrupt changes of direction or experimenta-tion. The first poems published in 1911 established its form: prosesketches and short poems in free verse. Although his verse alwayshad a strong Neo-Romantic confessional character, influence ofExpressionist and Futuristic verse can be traced, as can that ofindividual poets, such as Walt Whitman and Verhaeren. Andric thepoet was not concerned with striking poetic effect or elaborateimages, but rather, as in his fiction, with the greatest possibleprecision in conveying a scene or mood. That is usually achievedthrough ostensibly simple language and expression, tending towardsunderstatement and making its impact through concentration. Thisdominance of the "idea" of the poem has determined its free verseform, in which the relationship between highly charged prose andverse is very close.

The subject matter of the verse falls into two broad categories:themes which recur as preoccupations in the prose writings - TheFirst World War, prison, isolation, the powerful attraction ofwomen, a tenuous vision of joy in the form of an imaginary woman -and more transient, immediate reactions to experiences. Some ofthese latter take the form of mood-pictures, reminiscent of passagesfrom Ex Ponto. There is a note of personal bitterness in some of theearlier poems, but this gives way gradually to more universalcomments on human experience.


The essential quality of the poems is their combination ofthoughtfulness and emotion. As might be expected, some of themore youthful pieces are dominated by an immature sentiment - ofRomantic suffering, Patriotism, the cult of sacrifice. In the poemswritten since 1930, however, the responsive, reflective figure of themature writer emerges.

A poem written in 1922, "Thought", suggests the direction fromwhich some consolation may come. The expression is over-explicitand somewhat prosaic, but in the last lines the essential idea isconveyed in terms which could stand almost as an account of thenature of Andric's poetry. It suggests that fleeting moments maysuddenly offer a vision of salvation and that solace for all earthlyaffliction may be found in the world of ideas.

Another early poem offers a more personal and complex reactionto the world, one which is characteristic of Andric. It evokes thefundamental unease of the human condition. The form of the poemis interesting, as it parallels that of Andric's last poem in its initialdenial and following explanation.

Vera salutrixNo salvation, nor, any more, dream of salvation!

Since I deeply, and secretly,Took my leave of all in the world,I adore now only speed and movement,For they slake desire and lessen distance,And carry each life and every thingTo its end and fulfilment.

A horror haunts me since the dayI first caught sight of myself,Treading the hard paths of the earth,Like a pious traveller of God,Seeking and praising onlyDeathWhich isPeace, Faith, Bridge and River-mouthOf every dream of salvation.21

Verse 65

The tone is youthful and contains perhaps an echo of Futurism. Itdemonstrates Andric's tendency to take a more extreme position inhis verse, which captures a sudden mood not tempered by theprocess of more gradual reasoned thought. There are two character-istic ideas in this poem. First the idea of withdrawal from the world,a withdrawal which was Andric's solace and main source of strength,but at the same time a cause of anxiety and guilt. Then the idea ofself-observation, accompanied by "horror". The "movement"praised here can perhaps be seen as a feature of Andric's verse ingeneral. At its best it captures fleeting moments with great simplic-ity. In a way it provides a contrast to the whole effort of the prosework, which is essentially to counteract transience. The poems tendto reflect the awareness of the brevity and fragility of life whichdrives men to create works of art, and to build bridges. It is asthough the writer relaxes in his verse, temporarily abandoning thewill to resist, and accepting instead the ease of submission toinevitable fate.

The nine pieces gathered under the title What I Dream and WhatHappens To Me, published between 1922 and 1931, give a clear ideaof the kind of themes that presented themselves to Andric as needingto be expressed in the succinct, concentrated form of his verse. Theyare for the most part mood-pictures, with more or less emphasis onthe mood, a Neo-Romantic identification of emotion and landscape.Andric's thoughts are not abstract and cerebral, but spring from anemotional response to the world around him. The cliched image ofthe aspen sensitive to every breeze, developed in Ex Ponto, describessuggestively enough the responsive nature of Andric the poet. He ismore susceptible in certain situations, notably when travelling orstaying somewhere abroad, and his melancholy nature inclines himtowards autumnal landscapes, although several poems express thejoy of life in the sun, usually by the sea. Two of these pieces are notmood-pictures; one is an anecdote which impressed itself on thewriter's imagination as an almost fully-formed embryonic story,while the other reflects on the nature of a cry heard in the night,evoking fleeting images of its possible causes, which could again bedeveloped at greater length, but the poet rejects the intrusion, for hewants only to sleep.

The most memorable of these poems, however, are concentrated


statements of fundamental aspects of Andric's attitude to the world,such as his praise of silence in the ninth poem of this group:

An inexpressible strength to the spirit and bodyis brought by silence, pride never spoken.I know the warm scent of the silkof love, and I know the fixed stare of farewell,and pleasure, and the desire for deathwhich follows after it like a shadow.But I have never known greater pleasure than the thought:that the sky, which shines above us like a promise,is merely a graveyard;and the only dignityand the one true prayer:are lowered eyes and unspeaking lips.

My thought leads me like a mysterious glowas I walk alone through the night and mist.22

One poem is particularly characteristic of Andric's whole inten-tion in his work. Its starting point is a sense of unease and guilttypical of his personality, but out of this grows a positive statementof belief in the extent to which the universal is contained in theparticular:

Yes, old painting,Yes, that is how it should have been,One should have kept to the first word,Not gone anywhere, and sought the heart's desiresDeep in oneself, and one's native land,Instead of in distant, unattainable, fateful apparitions.One should have been patient, waited, watched over the crops,Cared for one's people, the poor, for Bosnia.And today it would not be as it is:Empty hands, uneasy conscience, a lost look, a thirsting soul.One should have known, alas, what is only now glimpsed.There is one sun everywhere, water, rock and grass.One and inaccessible.All the rest is an illusion of the frenzied mind

Verse 67

About oneself, and a false perspectiveOf the desert we set alight in our own hearts.23

Within the context of Andric's work as a whole these few poemsoffer a rare glimpse of the writer's more private sensibilities, out ofwhich he wove his numerous portraits of his fellow-human beings.Some areas were too private for Andric's verse, unless such poemswere written and later destroyed. His personal experience of loveand marriage, for example, is nowhere reflected in this verse exceptin the most indirect terms. Here, as elsewhere, Andric seeks topresent only what is most profound and consequently universal, theresponse to the world which underlies all the incidental experience ofan individual. Even without the rest of his work, the verse and prosepoems would stand as the record of the deeply thoughtful responseof a sensitive but robust personality.

Andric's last poem, written in 1973, two years before his death,conveys his essential nature. It calls for direct confrontation with thebare facts of death, without the solace and delusion of prayer andbelief in eternity. Andric's world is stark, like the barren mountainsof his childhood and his essential experience of human relations. Thewriter drives himself constantly to face what he regards as thisfundamental truth of reality. He is clear-sighted and courageous inthis endeavour, which is consistent throughout his work. And yet,the very existence of this work bears witness to a contrary impulse:the almost involuntary, irrational will to survive against all the odds.Underlying the stoicism of Andric's response to the world, andwarming it unexpectedly from time to time, is an indomitableoptimism, a joyous acceptance of the strength of life, "whichendures and stands firm, like the bridge over the Drina".

No gods, no prayers!And yet it happens that I sometimes hearSomething in me like a whispered prayer.That is my old and ever wakeful wishRising from somewhere in the depthsAnd softly asking for a little spaceIn one of Eden's endless gardens,Where I might at long last findWhat I sought here always in vain.24

3

Short Stories

(i) 1920^1

After the personal, confessional nature of the early prose poems, thefirst impression conveyed by Andric's short stories is of their objec-tivity. Andric as an individual, with a particular life's path andexperience, is remarkably absent from his prose fiction. But thisobjectivity is only on the surface. The many characters and situa-tions portrayed all tend to illustrate those fundamental facts ofhuman existence with which Andric is concerned in his verse. Theextent to which all his works are indeed part of one and the samework becomes clear as the symbolic quality of the stories emerges.

The major part of his fiction consists of short stories, comprisingeight volumes of the collected works if one includes the novella,Devil's Yard, as opposed to the four novels. The stories cover a rangeof themes, although many of them, and the majority of thosepublished before the Second World War, are set in Bosnia atdifferent points in its history. The subsequent course of Andric's lifeas a diplomat is quite removed from his central interests as a writer.Some aspects of his public life are reflected in the stories publishedin this period but these are only settings; the intricacies of diplomaticlife and the writer's own activity in it play no part.

Andric himself is also absent because of the lack of any real sense ofthe narrator making an objective comment on his characters andthemes. It has been said that this non-analytical, suggestive quality ofhis writing is a product of the influence of Oriental traditions, wherestories are told not in perfectly composed logical wholes by pro-fessional artists, but by "wise men, sorcerers, witches and saints".Andric's prose depends less on lengthy dialogue and elaborate,detailed description than on the evocation of atmosphere, mood,vivid pictures, the suggestion of deeply hidden secret currents, with

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no attempt at comment and analysis. This is particularly true ofthe stories set in Bosnia, which frequently have the density ofpoetry.

The reaction to the world expressed in Ex Ponto and Anxieties wasessentially emotional and spiritual. It was suspicious of any attemptto impose "logic" or rigid systems on to human experience -suspicious, that is, of an exclusively intellectual ordering of thatexperience. This initial response is reflected again in Andric'sfictional characters' reaction to the world, which is also essentiallyemotional. In the majority of his stories Andric writes from the pointof view of his characters, so as to convey a sense of the quality oftheir existence from the inside.

It is artificial to try to impose a chronological organization on tothe stories. We do so here for the sake of clarity and because there isa very general tendency towards more contemporary themes in thestories published after the Second World War, although historicalthemes and Bosnia continue to provide material, and there is no cleardividing line.

The stories do, however, arrange themselves into groups, and thisis how they have been printed in the collected works, with theauthor's agreement. There is, for example, one volume entitledChildren, which contains tales concerning children or seen throughtheir eyes. There is a whole series of stories, set in the little town ofVisegrad, which are similar to the individual and more or less self-contained chapters of the novel The Bridge on the Drina. From theseit emerges that the nature of the novel's composition - in relativelyshort units - was established many years before Andric came to writeit. There are also stories connected with Sarajevo and with Travnik.In these stories set in Bosnia there is a strong sense of history. Somedramatic moments recur, such as the Serbian uprising of 1804 andits effect on neighbouring Bosnia and the border town of Visegrad,in 1878. There are also several characters who seem to haveparticularly appealed to Andric's imagination and who recur in aseries or small cycle of stories: the two monks, Brother Marko andBrother Petar, the half- gypsy Corkan and the peasant VitomirTasovac, for example. The personalities of these various charactersset the tone of the stories in which they occur, and the tone ofAndric's writing is consequently varied. There are also some pieces


of fantasy which are closer to Andric's prose poetry or reflectiveprose than to conventional narrative fiction.

We may, then, attempt to organize the abundant variety ofAndric's short stories by considering them in groups, both by themeand by tone.

The initial division, however, is between those set in Bosnia,either in the vague Turkish past or in more precise historicalcircumstances, and those set in other parts of Europe or anunspecified, contemporary context. Of the thirty-three stories prin-ted in the collected works and published between 1920 and 1941,twenty-five are set in Bosnia, four in specific circumstances inEurope and one in a contemporary but unspecified setting, while theremaining three are timeless personal, dreamlike discourses.

In other words, Bosnia clearly dominates in the stories publishedbetween the two wars. The first striking feature of the majority ofthese tales is their violence. This frequently takes the form ofbrutality, the persecution of the vulnerable, and is present in ageneral impression of the low cost of human life. The options opento an individual whose experience falls outside the established socialnorms, for whatever reason, are strictly limited and death isfrequently the only solution which appears to present itself. Suchindividual human tragedies, however, while they may dominate aparticular story, are rarely left to speak for themselves - they areplaced in an historical setting which reduces their absolute import-ance and suggests that they are simply part of a larger-scale process,in which all individuals are in any case doomed to oblivion.

There is no strict pattern to the violence; some stories focus on thecharacters on whom it is inflicted and some on those who inflict it.What links them is the sense that both kinds of experience place theindividual outside society. These individuals, through their isola-tion, are granted a special insight and their exceptional experiencereflects a truth about human relations which is normally disguisedand suppressed in social organization. Isolated from society, ahuman being is seen to be either victim or pursuer, attacker or prey.The tone of an individual story dominated by violence will then beone either of brutality or of humiliation and fear. While the narrationis generally third-person, each story is told largely from the point ofview of the main character.

Short Stories 71

This can be seen in Andric's first short story, published in 1920 -"The Journey of Alija -Derzelez".1 This story is also of particularinterest because it is explicitly concerned with the subject of a legend.The protagonist is the hero of a large number of Moslem heroicballads. Bearing in mind the special place accorded to "legend" and"fairy-tale" in Andric's statements about art, we should considerexactly what form "the grain of truth contained in legend" takes in atale such as "The Journey of Alija -Derzelez". It should be said that wecan trace two main categories of "legend" in Andric's works: thosestories which appear to arise from a need to account for and formalizea perennial, basic human experience - lust, jealousy, shame, delusion- and those which bear witness to man's need to organize even hismost trivial experience into manageable units.

In the first category of story, it is not the legend itself that Andricis concerned to illustrate but the stage before it came into being: thecircumstances which gave rise to it. The social conditions whichproduced Alija, and his Serbian equivalent Marko Kraljevic, werethose prevailing in an aggressive, masculine culture. The traditionalballads concerned with Alija deal exclusively with his prowess on thebattlefield. Andric refers to his fame in just one sentence: "He wasrenowned for many battles and his fearful strength . . ."2 andimmediately takes him off his horse, setting him down in a contextwhere he appears awkward because he is not used to being on theground, or to normal social interaction. His stature is at oncediminished: "In a few days the njagic circle around -Derzelez hadquite disappeared."3 There is no clear reason why the label "hero"should have attached itself to this particular person. He is small,unprepossessing, ungainly as soon as he dismounts, awkward anduninteresting in conversation. He is slow-witted and chronicallylacking in imagination. But he is also obsessive. Once he sees abeautiful woman he can think of nothing else but possessing her. Orhe abandons himself wholeheartedly to the singing of a particularlyfine traditional singer: "Berzelez felt that the singer was tugging athis soul and that any moment now, he would expire, from excessivestrength, or excessive weakness."4

-Derzelez can flourish only in circumstances where his simple-minded strength and single-minded energy can be expressed in theimmediate violent ways he understands. He is quite baffled by more


intricate social relationships and by the whole deeply disturbingquestion of women. Andric here exploits the comic possibilities ofexposing a renowned hero to the demands made on men by theirencounters with women, in a similar way to some of the traditionalballads about Marko Kraljevic. Marko's reaction is, however,generally more subtle. -Derzelez, in Andric's portrayal, is at the mercyof his complete lack of imagination. This is probably the key to hisfabled position. Failing to understand why he should be deniedpossession of any beautiful woman who catches his eye simply becauseof a discrepancy in their social position,-Derzelez is prepared to ignoreall social convention and ride roughshod over taboos and boundariesrespected by others as sacred and unchallengeable. Such an awarenessmay well result in apparently heroic actions; indeed many heroicactions probably stem from just such a lack of imagination. InAndric's story, however, because he is taken out of his usual context,•Derzelez's attitude simply makes him a figure of fun.

This is the case at least as far as the outside world is concerned.For the reader there is a further level of response, since the story istold in such a way as clearly to evoke the impact of -Derzelez onothers and yet to allow the reader to a large extent to enter into hisexperience and to look at the world, with its arbitrary rules, throughhis uncomprehending eyes:

He seethed with fury. Not to be able to reach that Serbian girl.Ever! And not to be able to kill anyone or destroy anything! A newwave of blood broke within him. - Or was this perhaps a trick?Were they making fun of him? Was this another of their jokes?But at the same time he felt clearly that these threads were too finefor his fingers and - who knows how often he had felt this in hislife - he could not begin to understand people and their simplestacts, and he would have to give up and retreat, and be left alonewith his absurd anger and superfluous strength.5

•Derzelez is, then, the first of Andric's outsiders, the social misfitwho pursues an unattainable illusion. This illusion comes in severalforms in Andric's work. It can be beauty (as here), power, happinessor escape. The sense of helpless constraint which overcomes ©er-zelez is one to which every individual is ultimately condemned.

This story establishes the pattern for many of the later ones: an

Short Stones 73

individual experience of the world which embodies a perennial humansituation, sufficient objectivity in the third-person narrative for theindividual to be seen in his or her more general context; but the wholestory is told, at least at key moments, from the point of view of theprotagonist. It is therefore the personality, or the particular experi-ence of the protagonist, which sets the tone.

One other dimension of this story requires brief mention. It iscomposed in three self-contained sections, clearly reflecting theorganization of the traditional ballads, following one "adventure" ineach individual song, but together forming a small "cycle". Thislinear development in short units was to remain the basic form ofAndric's narrative procedure. In addition to its strictly formal nature,this cyclical pattern can be seen to reinforce the sense of the hero'shelplessness, his constraint within his nature and his times.

In a large number of stories the experience of the main character ismarked, as is that ofDerzelez, by bewilderment. This can spring froma general incomprehension in the face of human behaviour, as withthe Moslem hero, or it can be the result of the particular circum-stances in which the character is placed. Such bewilderment can markequally the "victims" and the "aggressors" in Andric's stories.

In the tales which focus on an aggressor the degree of hisresponsibility is open to question; his behaviour is explained by thecombination of his own personality and his particular experience. Heis not thereby absolved from guilt, but it seems as though Andric seesthe world as containing a certain weight of evil, with particularindividuals as its necessary instruments.

One example is the case of "Mustafa the Hungarian".6 He is asoldier who has achieved a hero's reputation because of his braveexploits in Hungary. His return to his native Bosnia is anticipatedeagerly, like that of -Derzelez, and the people's disappointment whenconfronted with the reality is similar. Mustafa is profoundly changedby his experience. The change is manifested outwardly in the fact thathe can no longer play his flute, and in his inability to sleep. When hedoes fall into a fitful sleep he is tormented by dreams of the brutalityhe has been forced to witness in the course of his life as a soldier. Thelife he chose and the brutality it entails take complete control of hisbody and its demands now govern his behaviour absolutely.

The story illustrates the clear distinction Andric makes between the


body, whose realm is the night, and the spirit, which can flourishonly by day. The tenuous survival of Mustafa's spirit is expressedthrough his flute-playing, but his experience as a soldier comes todominate his life entirely. It appears that such uncontrolled andunbalanced physical violence brutalizes the whole personality and.leads ultimately to self-destruction. The coherence of Mustafa'spersonality is fractured by his experience. This fragmentation, andthe restlessness that will take him relentlessly on an increasinglydestructive course, are expressed in his outward behaviour:

He did not dare stand still. He had to keep moving, because hewas equally afraid of sleeplessness as of his dreams, if he fell asleep. . . He could no longer endure it, but saddled his horse and leftthe village, in the dark, and silently as a criminal.7

To the extent that Mustafa does not understand his actions andcannot control them, he can be included among the "bewildered". Amark of his incomprehension in the face of his experience is hisrepetition of a formula: "The world is full of swine". Severalcharacters in Andric's works use a similar formula simply to registertheir essential experience of the world. It enables them to formalizethis experience in a way which cannot make it more acceptable, butat least establishes a pattern in their response which is in itself a kindof solace. This technique can be seen as an example of that vividrecording of experience, rather than any attempt to analyse it, whichcontributes to the Oriental flavour of Andric's writing.

The majority of the other aggressors are, like Mustafa, variationson the theme of an individual who inflicts suffering in the context ofthe systematic violence of an army. Mustafa is brutalized andderanged by the experience of war. Another possibility is that aparticular type of person will be drawn to join the army and flourishbecause it gives him an opportunity to express the violence already inhis nature. That is the case with Mula Jusuf in the story "In Camp",8

a man with an obscure history of implication in uninvestigated actsof violence. He does not dominate the story in which he appears butremains a sinister presence in the background until the end, when heis given the task of taking a young Turkish woman, dispossessed bythe war, back to her father. The pattern of his vicious behaviour

Short Stones 75

then reasserts itself. Alone with the woman, he forces her to stripand eventually stabs her to death.

The idea illustrated in "Mustafa the Hungarian", of individualsfunctioning as vehicles for evil, is reinforced by Andric's depictionelsewhere of armies as organic forces that sweep across the land.Military institutions have evolved as socially acceptable instrumentsof aggression and destruction, their elaborate machinery providing achannel for the same forces which are considered irrational in anindividual. Mula Jusuf's solitary assault on the girl is horrifying, butsimilar actions by groups of soldiers are seen by the outside world asa regrettable but inevitable aspect of war. The confusion which sucha double standard causes works to absolve Jusuf to a certain extent,and he too appears as the victim of a world dominated by evil toopowerful for any human institution to control effectively.

The haunting story "Torso",9 with its striking central image, alsoportrays a man who thrives in a violent situation. It requires closerexamination. The structure of this story is one to which Andric wasto return in Devil's Yard. There is an outer frame of omniscientnarration which describes the monk Brother Petar in his cell,recounting a story told to him by a servant in Asia Minor, wherePetar was exiled for some years. The focal point is the figure BrotherPetar sees framed in the window of the clock tower of a huge fortifiedmansion where he has been summoned to mend the clock. It is thefigure of a man who once ruled Syria as a ruthless tyrant, havingbeen sent there to quell a rebellion. Eventually, after years ofsystematic brutality, a terrible revenge is wrought on him, and he isleft - his limbs crushed and the features burned from his face - agrotesque torso, who is carried by his servants out into the garden tosit in the sun. His obvious harmlessness is emphasized before Petarrealizes what he is seeing: "Something like a child, like an oldwoman was sitting there . . ."10

This story is particularly concentrated, with each frame contribut-ing a dimension to the meaning. Petar is a skilled mechanic wholoves to mend the things of the world which inevitably wear out andbreak; he is particularly interested in clocks, of which he has a largecollection in his cell. He is therefore seen to be on the side of time, inharmony with it and not trying to resist its passing. The servant whotells the story of Celebi-Hafiz represents a pattern of survival


regardless of the fluctuations of the fortunes of his masters. Bycontrast with these two passive vehicles of his story, Celebi-Hafizhimself offers an extreme example of a pattern of rise and fall, powerand ruin, abrupt change, interpreted by the people either as DivineRetribution or the workings of an Oriental Fate. No distinction ismade between these two possible accounts of the tyrant's downfall,respectively "Western" and "Eastern": God is simply another namefor Fate. At one point, for instance, the people are described aspraying to God, "not because they expected any help, for God was atthat time still on the side of the Hafiz, but because there was no pointin praying to the Hafiz".11 Like all Andric's monks who play aprominent role, at this level Petar makes no attempt to interpret theworkings of fortune in terms of his own faith. On the contrary, thefirst association which springs to his mind when he sees the "torso"nodding its head in the sun is with one of his fellow-monks noddingas the censer is swung beside him in church. The association doesnot strike him as in any way irreverent. And yet, Petar is consciousof the differences between East and West and makes an ironicalcomment when he comes to examine the clock:

As soon as I opened it I could see the situation. It was Venetianand well-made, but it had been badly set up so that its workingswere exposed to the rain. It must have been done by a Greek or anArmenian, and they are just not suited to this kind or work,because you cannot cheat and lying is no use.12

There is no real attempt to explain the tyrant's fall, simply arecognition that time and fortune inevitably bring change. Variousthemes are touched on which could be enlisted as an explanation.Petar is introduced as reflecting about the preponderance of evil inthe world; the servant introduces his account of the revenge of thetyrant's prisoners with the words: "there is a cure for every ill, andthat is that at every moment of a man's life there is a possibility thathe will make a mistake, just one slight slip, but that is enough tocause his death and his absolute ruin."13 In addition, the instrumentof the tyrant's downfall is a woman; the only creature for whom heever felt real compassion or affection. But none of these possiblehuman rationalizations is developed; Celebi-Hafiz simply falls from

Short Stones 77

power, just as cities and whole civilizations have flourished andperished throughout time.

As can be seen from this brief sketch, the basic theme of the storyis obvious enough. But the image of the mutilated figure in hisgarden is powerful and haunting. It conveys at once a sense thatnothing has changed. He can make no other physical movement thanraise his head, but he does this with such pride that he is clearlyunrepentant, and this gives him a curious dignity. And at the sametime the grotesque reduction of his physical being brings a sense ofresignation and peace. The enigmatic quality of this figure, whichsettles in Brother Petar's imagination, is emphasized by a series ofquestions about the circumstances in which he heard the story: Whowas the servant? Where did he come from? How did he know somuch about the Hafiz? And was it all true? Petar concludesambiguously:

It happened in Asia, in a country where everything is possibleand where everyone asks how and why things are the way theyare his whole life long, and where no one can ever answer orexplain anything, where questions are not resolved but for-gotten.14

The existence of these aggressors implies victims. These are often,although not exclusively, women. One whole story is devoted todifferent aspects of the victimization of women. Translated intoEnglish as "The Pasha's Concubine",15 it is the story of a young girlwho catches the eye of a Turkish army officer and is summoned tohis house. She appeals to him because of her extreme youth - she isnot quite sixteen and the reason he gives for finding this stageattractive establishes one of the themes of the story: "This is theright moment in her life. She was separated from her family,frightened, alone, dependent entirely on him. From time to time sheseemed to him like a little animal, which, driven against a cliff,stared at him wide-eyed and trembling."16 The image of a helplessterrified animal is used also of Mula Jusuf s victim. In each case thewoman's vulnerability acts as a provocation, a magnet drawing thestronger element by a logic of its own. Into the story of Mara theconcubine herself are woven two further tales of the victimization ofwomen, so that together they form a complete statement of the


plight of woman as an innocent victim. The theme of the pursuitof a wild animal is developed in the subsidiary account of the rapeof a ten-year-old girl, lured out of town by two youths with apromise of sugar. And in the household where Mara ends her daysone of the women has a violent husband who has beaten herregularly since their wedding night.

The story of Mara the concubine is developed, as is that ofMustafa the Hungarian, in such a way as to make them not onlyvivid individuals in specific circumstances, but also in a wayarchetypal.

Among the stories published between the wars there are severalcharacters who dominate the tales in which they appear and seemsimilarly to stand for a whole category of human experience. Anexample is the heroine of the story "Anika's Times".17 Anika is awoman who wreaks havoc in Visegrad through the unpredictabledistribution of her favours. The impact she made is still spoken ofwhen the story opens, several generations later. Anika is a self-willed creature whose defiance of convention - flouted initially outof pique with a particular young man - predictably brings her nohappiness to the extent that she welcomes the prospect of theinevitable retribution against her as a relief for herself and others:"It would be an act of charity if someone would kill me"18, sherepeats several times before her death. In this way Anika herself isnot entirely in control of her destiny, but is the vehicle of anoverwhelming power over men.

The story of Anika is given an additional dimension in the formof an explanatory introduction the exact meaning of which isperhaps not immediately clear, but emerges from the account of"Anika's Times", This introduction describes the growing schizo-phrenia of the parish priest of a village outside Visegrad and hisobsessive, furtive watching of women. As long as the villagersspeak of him they tend to be reminded also of Anika. There is onlya tenuous connection between her and Father Vujadin, so that theassociation of the two stories in the villagers' minds seems tosuggest a more profound link. Vujadin's madness is not directlyattributable to his experience of women; he has become cut offfrom his fellow-men by a variety of factors. But as he steadily losestouch with society, women seem to loom ever larger in his

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consciousness. It is this aspect of his madness that seems todisturb the villagers and urge them to give it form in theirrecollection of the legend of Anika.

Within the framework of the story "Anika's Times", thisintroduction appears as a kind of meditation on man's perennialneed to control and account for his powerful response to woman,the need which led to the creation of the legend of Adam and Eve.Here we can see clearly the nature of the "legends" that concernAndric. As in the case of Alija €)erzelez the writer returns to thestage before the legend evolved, to depict the circumstances out ofwhich it arose. In the case of Alija he portrays a hero whom onemight describe as the ideal of an aggressive masculine culture.From Andric's account it is clear that his attributes, as they areglorified in the ballads about him, have more to do with the needsof the audience and the singer than with the true nature of the manwho has been singled out almost at random.

The story "Death in Sinan's Tekke"19 can be seen as a furtherelaboration of the theme of man's powerful, irrational response towoman. It is told in a gently ironic tone and offers an example ofAndric's subtle humour. It is the tale of a wise old dervish, widelyrespected and admired. As he lies dying in the monastery, peoplecome from miles around to hear his last words of wisdom. Finallythe time comes for him to part from the world and he stopsspeaking in a moment of silent meditation. Those with him watchreverently as the great man evidently offers up his soul to God,and then ceases to be without a further word. What they cannotknow is that Alidede, in his final moments, is preoccupied not by aserene prayer but by two memories, the only two incidents fromhis long life that come to him at that moment of exceptionalsignificance. Each incident involves a disturbing experience with awoman. The first is his discovery, as a child, of the body of adrowned woman. He was so upset that he found himself unableever to speak of it. The second is his hearing, as a young monk,the running footsteps of a young woman and her pursuer. In herdesperation the woman beat on the monastery gate - her only hopeof escape - but Alidede, who witnessed the scene from his cellwindow, could not bring himself to go down and open the gatewhich would have brought him into direct contact with her. His


last, unspoken words do indeed take the form of a prayer, but onethat is very different in content from what those watchingimagine:

"Almighty, Great and Only One, I am so much with You and sofirmly in Your hands that I know that nothing can befall me. Thisrealization, this peace which You give to those who, relinquishingall, have given themselves entirely to You, that is, in fact,paradise. I have lived without hardship, floating like a tiny grainof dust that hovers in the sun's rays: without weight, as it driftstowards the heights, it is imbued with sun, and is itself like a smallsun. I did not know that such bitterness as I feel now could fill aman's soul. I had forgotten that woman stands, like a gate, at theexit as at the entrance to this world. And now, this bitterness hascome into me, and it sears my heart in two, reminding me of whatI had forgotten, as I gazed into the sky: that the bread we eat isactually stolen; that for the life we have been given we areindebted to misfortune - sin, mischance; that you cannot crossfrom this world into that better one until you are plucked off like aripe fruit, falling in a painful, headlong flight and thudding on tothe hard earth. You probably bear the bruise of that fall even inparadise. This is my thought, Merciful One, and You see it,whether I speak it or not: it is harder and more bitter than Ibelieved to be enslaved by the laws of Your earth."20

It may be seen that there is a certain pattern in the storiesdiscussed so far. Alidede's insight into the fundamental forces of lifeis made possible by the single-minded devotional life he leads. Hisexperience is very limited and his mind uncluttered; he is able to seethe world more clearly than others who may be too involved in theirown complex affairs. The Franciscan monk Brother Petar is simi-larly clear-sighted because of his distance from the world. For themost part, however, individuals who are preoccupied with livingtheir lives in society cannot see the world for what it is. As soon asthey step outside the norms of society they are granted a similarinsight to that of Alidede. Anika's experience is the mildest of thosewe have been considering. Her distance from society leads her torealize the extent of her power over men and the fact that her life hasbecome a channel for these basic instincts. The priest Vujadin has to

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step over the border of sanity before he can realize the strength ofthese currents.

Vujadin's case suggests that in Andric's writing madness can be akind of "privileged" state, granting individuals an insight into thefundamental currents of life. Mara the concubine and Mustafa aredriven similarly beyond the bounds of sanity by their experience,and they are able to recognize the full extent of the power of evil.

The strength of evil is generally disguised in society, whereelaborate structures are built up to channel and control it. Oncethese structures are destroyed, for whatever reason, the individualsare confronted by the full force of the currents underlying humanlife.

In the case of Alidede, Vujadin and Anika it is not evil that isrevealed by their experience, simply a recognition of forces whichare also normally channelled and controlled by society. The impactof this realization is disturbing and alarming because the forces areirrational.

Andric's depiction of children is similar. Their experience of theworld, like that of the characters we have been discussing, isessentially of things which are upsetting or frightening because theyare not understood. As long as the children's experience is not tooextreme this phase of bewilderment will pass with their maturity,their achieving a role and position in the world which disguise thestark facts of existence, and they will grow into balanced adults.

We can perhaps now see that all these characters suffer fromsomething of the same kind of bewilderment in the face of life as-Derzelez.

The most engaging of the characters beset by this bewilderment,in a far more light-hearted tone, is the monk Brother Marko. He isthe protagonist of four stories, of which two in particular illustratehis outlook.

The first of these, "In the Guest House",21 describes Marko'sposition in the monastery. He is a peasant of limited intellect, givento expressive language quite inappropriate to his calling. He isprofoundly confused by the complexities of the vocation thrustupon him by his relatives. He does, however, find himself a nichein the life of the monastery which suits his temperament. He is


given charge of of overseeing work on the monastery lands, of theanimals and wines, and of attending to the needs of the travellerswho stay in the monastery guest house.

Athough he is confused by the dogma of his religion, Marko findsthat he is sometimes granted moments when he feels in perfectcommunion with his God. These moments occur most frequentlywhen he is working on the land, digging or planting out cabbages:

So, after some heavy work, he sits down on a log, wipes the sweatfrom his face and breathes hard, then suddenly feels the bloodroaring in his shoulders, his neck and his head, louder and louder,until his head spins and the noise fills him completely and carrieshim away. He sits with his head in his hands, his eyes open, but itseems as though he is flying swiftly away somewhere. And thenhe, who does not know how to write nicely or to speak cleverly, issomehow able to understand everything and to speak clearly andfreely with God Himself.22

Marko's faith is subjected to a severe test when a Turkish visitor isbrought into the guest house fatally ill. His companions leave him inMarko's care, ostensibly to seek help, but they do not return. As hetends the sick man, Marko is overcome by a desire to save the soul ofthe dying infidel. His eagerness gives him a new eloquence and hesurprises himself with the fluency with which he half remembersphrases from his studies and invents his own arguments. The Turksuffers this onslaught silently, but when at last he is about to die andincapable of speech Marko brings a crucifix for him to kiss.Summoning his last strength, the Turk spits at it. Marko is appalled;he seizes the cross and rushes out into the summer night, his headthrobbing with fury. Gradually, however, his anger subsides:

He began to lose himself in the quiet night, in the gaze ofinnumerable stars. He slowly forgot himself. Waves from histrembling body carried over on to everything around him and hefelt as though he were sailing swiftly over an ocean in the dark.The sky above him rocked noticeably. There were sounds allaround. He clasped the railing tightly.

Everything was on this great moving ship of God's: the villageand the fields and the monastery and the guest house.

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"I knew that You did not forget anyone, not even stutteringMarko or that sinful Osmo Mameledzija. If someone does spit onYour cross, it is only like a bad dream. There is still room foreveryone on Your ship . . ."

In his delirium, he did not know whether he was speaking outloud or only thinking to himself. But he could see: there was roomon God's ship for everything and everyone, for He did notmeasure with rulers or scales. Now he understood how He couldbe The Terrible Lord, how He could move worlds, he understoodeverything, although he had no words for it, only he could notunderstand how it was that he, Brother Marko Krneta, a clumsyand disobedient monk, was standing here holding the tiller of thatship of the Lord's. - And then he forgot himself again. He knewonly that everything that existed was moving and travelling, andthat it was all going towards Salvation.23

This image of a Christian God willing to accept all sinners,whatever their professed religion, is echoed in a story published afterthe Second World War in which Allah is similarly described asadvising a Franciscan monk not to change his faith as "this questionof faiths isn't as important to us up here, in this world, as it is to youthere, particularly in Bosnia."24

It is characteristic that Andric should use his expressly religiouscharacters to convey a philosophical outlook which transcends anyspecific dogma. In Bosnian Story the Franciscan monk Brother Lukais one of the spokesmen for Andric's view of life as a perpetual ebband flow. Petar and Alidede are also monks. Such men are confron-ted daily by the fundamental questions of existence, and, except onrare occasions, the coherence of their lives is not threatened by directexperience of evil. It is clear, however, that the outlook of theindividual monks is conditioned primarily by their personalities,which may be enhanced by their way of life but not determined by it.In other cases, the religious dogma of any faith is seen as excludingthe individual. Marko's failure to grasp the intricacies of Christianityin fact leaves him free for a genuine spiritual experience. But he ismade to feel guilty and inadequate by his fellow-monks, who haveaccess to a kind of secret society, the rules of which he cannotunderstand and which is therefore denied him. Characters in


Andric's works may evolve their own ritual to order their experi-ence, but they will feel excluded from any organized communalpattern of behaviour. "The Pasha's Concubine" offers an illustrationof this. Mara's experience of the world is reduced to her essentialfear, but this fear is expressed in a particular way. She feels cut offfrom other human beings by seeing them at crucial momentsengaged in a ritual which excludes her. She is excluded from societyby what she has become, and when she turns to the Church she findsthat although its ritual is more familiar to her, it is still outside her,passing judgement on her. There is always a discrepancy in Andric'sworks between the appearance of religious fervour as seen from theoutside and the individual experience of it. The example of Alidede,whose fellow-monks interpret his last prayer so differently fromwhat it is in reality, is typical.

Marko is granted another moment of insight in the story whichrecounts his death. There is a darker tone to this experience,however, and the implications for Andric's own outlook are ofparticular importance. This story, "Beside the Brandy Still"25,revolves around the image of a medallion - a "coin with two sides" -showing the head of a Christian saint, which Marko once saw duringhis studies in Rome. Various experiences disturb him deeply and hisexperience crystallizes in one idea: "Undoubtedly, there was a greatdeal of evil in the world, and it was stronger than he could guess.Perhaps it was as strong as the power of good, perhaps evenstronger."26

Eventually, as he works by a fire in the monastery, distilling plumbrandy, Marko watches the face of a Turkish visitor, who is tauntinghim and the Christian religion:

Brother Marko would raise his eyes involuntarily from his taskand glance at the Turk. That head thrown back, that pale facewith its green shadows, blazing eyes, everything reminded him ofsomething remote and exalted: of the head of a saint whom he hadseen on a picture in a Roman Church. However hard he resistedthis sinful comparison which disturbed him, it came back andimposed itself irresistibly like a tempter. This was the head of theunknown saint and martyr: the same exaltation, the same shiningeyes and expression of sublime pain . . ,27

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The question of the balance of good and evil has importantimplications in Andric's work and in the philosophy of life thatemerges from it. His earliest prose poems, and many of the storiespublished between the wars, show a preoccupation with the weightof evil in the world. It seems from Ex Ponto and Anxieties that only acourageous will to survive persuades Andric sometimes to glimpse abalance in the forces of destruction and creation. This belief is ratherthe product of an intuitive faith than a conclusion based onexperience, still less on the unquestioning acceptance of any set ofreligious views. In the stories published between the wars there isonly one character who seems to express a preponderance of good.This is Corkan, the illegitimate half-gypsy, a figure right outside thenorms of society, who has many of the qualities of a typical "fool ofGod". He is a character who appealed to Andric, recurring as thecentral figure of one story, "Corkan and the German Girl"28, in thestory "Mila and Prelac"29 and in the novel The Bridge on the Drina.

Corkan is a general scapegoat in Visegrad, a figure of fun whohimself joins in the mockery. In the story "Corkan and the GermanGirl" he is shown obsessively pursuing an obviously unattainableideal, in much the same way as Alija -Derzelez. The light andhumorous tone of the story reflects Corkan's personality. The objectof his obsession is physically inaccessible: a tight-rope walker in anAustrian circus company visiting Visegrad. The chaos caused by thecircus eventually results in Corkan's receiving a beating which seemsto be a regular occurrence, having more to do with relieving thefeelings of the official inflicting the punishment than the extent ofthe crime. When his wounds have healed Corkan emerges from thehayloft where he crawled to recover, laughing at the way he climbsdown the ladder. Corkan's resilience, good humour and spontaneityare always associated with the sun, the central symbol of positiveforces in Andric's work. Indeed, the character can be seen to havegrown out of the role played by the sun in Andric's writing.

When, in his old age, Corkan is reduced by the circumstances ofhis daily existence to a worn-out scarecrow, he simply shrinks anddecays while his life steadily ebbs away. He has sight in only one eye:"But the whole sun still fits into that one eye."30

Corkan's death is a rare example in Andric's work of a peaceful,entirely dignified end. He sits in the sun, singing softly over and over


again the first two words of a long-forgotten song, and slowly passesout of life: " . . .[he] was bathed in sunlight and quite filled with asense of a strange relationship and perfect harmony between every-thing that is lost and all that is found, between what is and whatceases to be."31

Corkan provides a counterpoint to the weight of evil in Andric'swork. For all its difficulties, his life is successful - gratuitously so,because of the gift of his temperament rather than any effort of hisown. He is born a channel for good as others are the instruments ofevil.

It emerges that the components of Andric's world are constant.The distribution of good and evil, aggression and suffering, positiveand destructive forces varies from one individual to another depend-ing in part on innate characteristics and in part on the circumstancesof their lives.

One more story from this period should perhaps be discussed, as itexemplifies several of the ideas touched on so far. "The Miracle atOlovo"32 concerns a young crippled girl taken by her mother to aholy spring believed to have miraculous healing powers. What takesplace is seen by the other women in the shrine as a miracle, and willbe recounted as such by them and through subsequent generations.As in the case of Alidede's prayer, however, the "miracle" is anotherexample of the discrepancy between an individual's experience andother people's perception of it. This experience too is one whichgives rise to legend and the legend then acquires a reality of its own.In the case of -Derzelez, the stories of his heroism are seen to be thenorm and -Derzelez himself as falling short of it, as being in someway less real than they are. Similarly, the crippled girl herself will beforgotten once her experience has served its purpose of fulfilling ahuman need for miracles. What happens to the girl is simply that herexhilaration with all the circumstances of her journey to Olovocombine with the sunlight pouring down into the water to create amoment of exceptional elation. As in the case of Mara the concubineand Mustafa the Hungarian, who found a formula to express theirawareness of fear and disgust respectively, the girl's experience is sointense that it demands formal expression. Such a form exists in theidea of a divine vision. This idea is no more rational than theexperience itself but it is familiar, sanctioned by time and institu-

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tionalized by established religions. It therefore acquires the superior"reality" that characterizes legend.

The discussion so far does not account for the whole range ofstories published between the wars, several of which have nosignificance beyond themselves, but are simply "good stories".

Often throughout his work, where this is the case, Andric will paymore attention to the manner in which the story is told than to itscontent. In his continuing reflection on the nature of narrative art,his interest extended beyond the experience which demanded to berecorded to the circumstances which made the telling of the talepossible and to the way in which it was told. Some individuals aredescribed as having a special gift which makes even the most familiarand ordinary tales worth listening to. One character with such a giftis the old Franciscan monk Brother Petar, to whom the youngermonks listen eagerly as he lies in his monastery bed recountingincidents from his long life. His personality imbues his tales with acalm reflective tone, an objectivity which is very different from theatmosphere of the stories we have been considering, where thecentral character and his experience dominate.

The other important stories published between the wars are notwritten from the point of view of a particular character, indeed theyare not about people at all. One is concerned with mountains, onewith bridges, and the third relates a persistent dream.

"Jelena, the Woman Who Was Not"33 expresses a theme whichpersists in Andric's work from Ex Ponto to some of the last notesrecorded in Signs by the Roadside. The woman Jelena is the symbolof an ideal of happiness which always escapes the writer. He is awareof her stepping silently through a snowy wood, and walking towardshis door along a dark corridor holding a flickering candle. She neverreaches the end of the corridor or the poet's door. In another mood,however, he wakes before dawn and stands by the window as thoughwaiting for her:

My thoughts hide the beauty of the whole world within them.The content of my life has become an unrealizable dream. Andso my life passes, but at the hour of my death I can point to mylonging as to the only great, true and beautiful thing in mylife.34


In the full-length story of Jelena she is described as appearing tothe writer without warning, often when he is travelling, andgenerally associated with sunlight. She comes, then, to stand for thekind of joy that comes from the (illusory) sense of freedom andexhilaration of travelling and the triumph of the spirit associated byAndric with the sun.

The theme of Jelena is clearly a personal one, and there is noattempt to make it objective through a third-person narrator. Theother two stories are generalized statements, important for anunderstanding of Andric's whole outlook. The themes they treat aredeveloped at greater length in the two historical novels, The Bridgeon the Drina and Bosnian Story.

"The Rzav Hills"35 describes the frenzied activities of theAustrians in the years following their occupation of Bosnia, and theway in which the hills are able to throw off all trace of them and theirugly buildings after their departure, returning to their ancient,enduring outlines. The story contains much of Andric's view of thedifferences between Eastern and Western culture, as these werevividly displayed in Bosnia when the European ways of Austria-Hungary were imposed on the more-or-less Oriental atmosphere ofOttoman Bosnia.

"The Bridge on the Zepa"36 is one of the stories richest in ideaswhich recur elsewhere in Andric's work. It provides a preliminarysketch for The Bridge on the Drina, in a concentrated form. ABosnian-born Grand Vizier in Constantinople whose experience issimilar to that of the great Mehmed Pasha, builder of the bridge onthe Drina - he was taken, like Mehmed, from his native village at theage of nine - wishes to endow his native village with a building thatwill be of enduring use. He is told of the regular destruction of thewooden bridges built over the Zepa and resolves to have a stonebridge built. The bulk of the story consists of the description of thededication of the master-builder, planning and building the bridge.Having made his initial plans and despatched them to Constanti-nople, he builds himself a cabin and settles there, buying simplefoods from the neighbouring peasants and preparing them himself,spending the whole day investigating the river and its currents,examining the stone he intends to use, carving and sketching. Whenwork begins, it is at first interrupted by a sudden storm that fills the

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river and sweeps away the preliminary structure. As in The Bridge ontheDrina, the villagers interpret this as the will of the river, rejectingall human innovation. But the building starts again, the workstopping with the onset of winter when the master-builder remainsin his hut, scarcely emerging, poring in solitude over his plans andcalculations. Eventually, halfway through the following summer, thebuilding is completed and the bridge emerges at last from thescaffolding.

The portrait given here of the master-builder suggests a devotionto an ideal conventionally associated with religious fervour. Thisgives his work a mysterious, almost supernatural quality. He workswith single-minded, self-denying dedication to create somethingwhich will transcend the vagaries of the natural world and theravages of a human time-scale. The ideas and the creative genius ofthe master-builder will long outlive him in his works.

In addition to the main theme - that the bridge embodies acomplete statement requiring no further comment - there is anotherimportant idea. The Vizier's initial desire to build somethingenduring in his native village is prompted by his experience ofimprisonment following a political upheaval in Constantinople. Thewinter months he spent in prison brought a new thoughtfulness, anew awareness of the narrow dividing line between life and death,and a new gratitude for being alive and at liberty. In prison, heremembered his native land and thought of the villagers' houseswhere his glory was frequently spoken of, without any realization ofthe price of that glory or the other side of success. His decision tobuild the bridge was an expression of this new perspective.

The hills in "The Rzav Hills" stand for the endurance andimmutability of the natural world in contrast to the transience ofhuman life. The bridge has a similar quality of permanence, at leastto the human mind, but it has the additional quality of being man-made. The bridge stands, then, for the creative principle, theexplicit striving of man to resist and conquer transience. It is abridge, in fact, between man's life on earth, his aspiration toeternity, and the life of the imagination. It is a particularly fruitfulsymbol in Andric's work, as can be seen in The Bridge on the Drina.It stands also for the guiding principle of his work, which is thatideas which can be abstracted from experience, like the Vizier's


motto, cannot communicate the truth of experience itself. The age-old need of mankind for stories is based on this fundamentalapprehension that fairy-stories and legends say more about humanlife and history than any abstraction can. Hence the whole move-ment in Andric's work away from analysis, in favour of completeentities, stories which communicate through their various compo-nents - the central image, recurrent vocabulary and emotionalcolouring - an experience which is more than the sum of these partsand which cannot, ultimately, be described or paraphrased.

(ii) 1945-60

In Andric's work as a whole there is no abrupt break or change ofdirection corresponding to the various upheavals of the troubledtimes he lived in. There is, rather, a steady evolution and develop-ment of themes and ideas, in which his personal experience is onlyindirectly reflected. Nevertheless, a number of short stories pub-lished after the Second World War either deal directly with it orreflect attitudes prevailing after it in various ways.

As was to be expected, the Yugoslav Communist Party whichcame to power after the Second World War was closely allied to theSoviet Party and the presence of Soviet advisers was felt in all aspectsof public life. Cultural life was dominated by the new Communist"establishment", whose influence restricted the range of subjectmatter considered "suitable" for literature. After 1948, and Yugosla-via's break with Stalin, the atmosphere in cultural life became morerelaxed, and from the early 1950s the scope of acceptable literarymaterial was steadily extended. Andric, who made a major contribu-tion to the literary life of the new Yugoslavia with the publication ofhis three novels in 1945, reflected something of the prevailingatmosphere in a number of his short stories from this period.Examples are "The Tale of the Peasant Siman",37 a complex story ofthe relationship between a Moslem landowner and his Christian serfas it is altered by the Austrian annexation of Bosnia, and a number ofpieces more or less directly concerned with the War. The first post-war years cannot, however, be seen as a homogeneous phase. Andricpublished some eighteen stories between 1945 and 1948, covering arange of themes and styles; from the tales set in Bosnia under

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Turkish or Austrian rule to themes from his childhood, and timelessreflections set in a contemporary context.

Only three stories deal directly and exclusively with the War itself,and of these one is in fact a sketch for a passage from the longest ofthe three, "Zeko".38 Describing the experience that led the inade-quate Zeko, dominated by an aggressive wife and collaborator son,to become involved in illegal activities in the Resistance in occupiedBelgrade, it has something of the uneven quality of The Woman fromSarajevo in that there is an imbalance between the treatment of thedifferent characters. In the novel the protagonist becomes almost acaricature among characters whose treatment is realistic. In "Zeko",the situation is reversed. The main character's credibility is under-mined initially by the almost grotesque figures of his wife and son,and his later development lacks conviction. Nevertheless, the storycontains some vivid passages, particularly those describing life bythe Sava River and the bombing of Belgrade.

The other two short pieces exclusively concerned with the War aremore consistent in tone. "The Titanic Bar",39 published in 1950,portrays the agonized fear of the Jewish owner of a little bar inSarajevo on the one hand and the development of the brutal,inadequate personality of a young Fascist, or "Ustasha", on theother. The material is superficially as directly a product of thespecific circumstances of the Second World War as "Zeko", and yetthe quality is different. This difference lies in the fact that the twomain characters in "The Titanic Bar" fall into archetypal categories,while Zeko's political "awakening" is not quite satisfactorily accoun-ted for by either his innate qualities or his experience.

"The Titanic Bar" describes the situation in Sarajevo in the earlystages of the War before the systematic removal of the Jewishpopulation to work camps or extermination, when individual mem-bers of the Ustasha movement took advantage of the times to rob andpersecute individual Jews. Some of these "Ustashe" acquired largesums of money or jewellery through blackmail or in return forhelping some Jews and their families to leave the country. Others,however, had to be content with small-scale activities of variouskinds. "And it was often here that the ugliest and most senselessscenes of unimaginable misery and horror took place."40 Andricdescribes the dingy, squalid little bar owned by Mento Papo, so


small that only half-a-dozen customers can stand in it at one time;and the character of Papo himself, the black sheep of the Sephardiccommunity of Sarajevo, who took up with petty gamblers anddrinkers at an early age and is generally regarded as having disgracedthe Jews. The situation is thus essentially ironic: Mento Papo isJewish only by birth; he has none of the attributes of wealth andsuccess which are generally associated with his race and providesome kind of provocation, in the form of envy or jealousy, for anti-Semitism. The crude emotion is here exposed for what it is: senselesshatred of what is different and easily identified as such. The portraitof Mento Papo then becomes an illustration of the growth of fear.The fear common to his whole people is exaggerated in Papo's caseby complete isolation. There is no possible way out of the sickeningblind alley of terror to which Papo is doomed. He is abandoned byall his former customers and ignored by the Jews with whom he hassometimes to do a day's hard labour. The process of his destructionis already well under way when the long-awaited knock on the doorfinally comes. The story of the young man in Ustasha uniform whothrusts his way into the bar is then given in detail. His family isdescribed as having begun to decline with the Austrian occupation ofBosnia, and his father as having had a lifelong ambition to exercisepower as a prison guard. There is also some doubt as to whether thechild is actually his, which leads to violent quarrels between husbandand wife. The child, Stjepan Kovic, is physically large, but slow-witted and innately dishonest, always a figure of fun in his nativetown. This background offers the typical combination of historicalcircumstances, innate characteristics and personal experience whichdetermines the environment in which an individual develops.

Just as Mento Papo's fear and isolation are archetypal, so Kovic'scharacter is also generalized in the manner typical of Andric. He isdescribed as "one of those barren and slovenly people who neitherwither nor ripen, who cannot reconcile themselves to an insignificantor average style of life, but have not the strength or ability to alter itby hard work or perseverance. From his childhood, a difficult andtormented man".41

The description of Kovic is developed into the portrait of aninadequate, dissatisfied and consequently potentially dangerouspersonality. He is a man who needs some outward sign of import-

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ance: he has to carry something as he walks through the town "andthe more unusual the article, the better he felt and the more easilyand assuredly he stepped".42

Kovic suffers from a painful, obsessive desire to be somethingother than he is, above all to be seen to be important. Theopportunity offered by membership of the Ustasha movement seemstherefore to answer his need, although he is taken no more seriouslywithin its ranks than he was outside it, and he soon begins to realizethat he has still not achieved the importance to which he feelsentitled. When Kovic finally acquires his "own" Jew to persecute, heis once again maddened by the contrast between his expectations andthe pathetic, squalid reality he encounters. The account of the"interrogation" is vivid, with Kovic's frustration and bitternessmounting to the point where he shoots his victim, repeatedly andfrenziedly.

This story is a satisfactory coincidence of universal, generalizedthemes of fear and persecution with the specific circumstances of theSecond World War in Bosnia, with both aspects of the wholedeveloped. As in the case of the victims in earlier stories, Papo'svulnerability acts as a magnet, a provocation to Kovic's aggression,which in turn functions as compensation for his own sense of uneasydissatisfaction.

It is at first sight perhaps surprising that Andric did not writemore directly about the War's effect on Bosnia, given the emphasisin his work on the propensity of the mixed population of the area tointercultural strife. But in fact, in view of the particular circum-stances of the War in Yugoslavia, it is quite understandable thatAndric's statements should have been on the whole indirect. Apartfrom the struggle with the occupying forces, the victory of theCommunist-led Partisan Army involved the defeat of elementshostile to it, including other local Resistance forces; the War saw alsothe emergence in Croatia of an "independent" Fascist state whichcontributed not only to the extermination of Jews, but also to theelimination of Serbs living in Croatian territory. The result was thatof the one-and-three-quarter million who died during the War, over600,000 were murdered by their fellow-Yugoslavs. If these circum-stances are not treated directly, however, much of Andric's worksince the War can be seen as an investigation of the state of mind and


the kind of breakdown of accepted norms of behaviour which can beseen to have contributed to conflict on such an appalling scale.

A reflection on the nature of intercultural relations in Bosnia isgiven in a piece published in 1946, under the title "Letter from theYear 1920".43 Throughout his work Andric uses Bosnia, with itspotential for intercultural conflict, as an image of the human worldwhere the basic conditions of existence can be seen in an extreme,raw form. His frequent reference to the widespread and deep-seatedhatred which he describes as characterizing the atmosphere ofBosnian life should be seen in these terms. Whether or not the storywas written, or at least drafted, earlier, it is certainly no coincidencethat it was published when it was, when the strife which Andric hadwitnessed in the First World War was exaggerated systematically inthe circumstances of open anti-Semitism and civil war.

This story is similar in flavour and manner to several publishedafter the Second World War, in which the first-person narratorexamines incidents from his own childhood and youth, usuallyexpanding them into more general statements. The degree to whichthese sketches and stories are actually autobiographical is in manycases uncertain, but together they add up to something approachingan account of the development of the writer's imaginative life. In"Letter from the Year 1920", the references to the response of thenarrator to the world of books are familiar. And it is likely that thecharacter of Maks Levenfeld is based on someone known to Andricas a young man. The substance of the piece, and letter itself,however, need have existed only in Andric's imagination, stimulatedby his understanding of Bosnia and his knowledge of the repercus-sions there of both world wars. It is a lengthy reflection of the natureof hatred, seen as an organic force, the "correlative" of fear. In thecontext of Andric's experience of war the irrational fear characteriz-ing human existence can be seen to have been channelled in aparticular direction. The Fascist Kovic's dissatisfaction is expressedas aggression as soon as the opportunity presents itself. In war, thesame fundamental unease is given universal expression in the form oflegitimized hatred:

Hatred which like a cancer in an organism wastes and con-sumes everything around it, to perish itself in the end, for such

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hatred, like a flame, has no constant form of life of its own; it issimply the instrument of the instinct for destruction and self-destruction . . . **

The extent to which this hatred is an inescapable facet of the humancondition is seen in the fact that although Levenfeld leaves Bosnia inorder to escape from its pervasive influence, he is killed as a volunteerin the Spanish Civil War. Typically, Andric undermines his charac-ter's brave attempt to break out of the pattern in this briefly statedironic final note. As always in Andric's work, however, even suchstatements as these are relative. In this story, in the context of war, theexistence of hatred - properly channelled - is seen as potentially also apositive force.

The story raises some other, general, issues. The fear which is theessential condition of human existence engenders the idea of theopposite, the ideal of perfect beauty, justice and happiness. Similarlythe hatred which is the manifestation of fear also implies its opposite,love. Acts of hatred may be carried out in its name, but the idealendures pure and untainted because it is entirely abstract, remotefrom daily experience. It is no coincidence, Andric seems to say, thatman has chosen to place his several gods in the distant heavens.

You are, for the most part, accustomed to keep the full force of yourhatred for what is close to you. The holy objects you love aregenerally beyond three hundred rivers and mountains, and theobjects of your revulsion and hatred are here beside you, in thesame town, often the other side of your courtyard wall. So your lovedoes not seek many deeds, but your hatred is very easily transform-ed into action. You love your native land, love it deeply, but in threeor four different ways which exclude and mortally abhor oneanother and often come into conflict . . . This impoverished,backward land in which four different faiths live crowded together,would need four times as much love, mutual understanding andtolerance as other countries. And in Bosnia, on the contrary, lack ofunderstanding, which occasionally turns to open hatred, is virtuallythe common characteristic of the population.45

Andric's comments on intercultural and interreligious conflict canbe read on the level of the absurdity of human strife throughout the


world and throughout history. A memorable passage in this storydescribes the different chimes of the bells in Sarajevo ringing outthe time differently for each of the four faiths. It is clear from thispassage that the divisions are man-made, as is the arbitrary choiceof method to express the passing of time. But just as the develop-ment of the calendar and clocks can appear to offer man controlover time, and his religion can appear to give his life meaning, socan his hatred of alien cultures appear to absolve him from his ownfear:

Whoever spends a night in Sarajevo awake in his bed, can hear thevoices of the Sarajevo night. The clock on the Catholic cathedralchimes heavily and assuredly: two in the morning. More than aminute passes (75 seconds to be exact, I counted) and only thendoes the clock from the Orthodox church strike with a somewhatweaker but penetrating sound, chiming out its two in the morning.A little later the clock tower at the Bey's Mosque sounds, with amuffled, distant voice, and it strikes eleven o'clock, eleven ghostlyTurkish hours, according to the calculations of remote, alien endsof the earth! The Jews do not have their own bell to chime, butGod alone knows what time it is for them, according to bothSephardic and Ashkenazy reckoning. So, even at night, whileeverything sleeps, in the chiming of the empty hours in the deadof night, that difference keeps vigil which divides these sleepingpeople who, when they are awake, rejoice and grieve, receiveguests and fast according to four different hostile calendars, andsend all their desires and prayers towards one sky in four differentliturgical languages. And this difference is always, sometimesvisibly and openly, sometimes imperceptibly and covertly, similarto hatred, often completely identical to it.46

Despite Andric's experience of the Second World War, in thestories published between 1945 and 1960 the extreme violenceand the brutality of the inter-war stories has generally gone; or atleast, in those stories in which violence is depicted it has goneinward and become subtler, even if its destructive power is almostas great.

For Andric an essential feature of human relationships remainsattack and defence, and he examines this now in his depiction of

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family life, where one partner in the marriage is seen as theaggressor. This aggression can take several forms. It reflects on theone hand Andric's concern with the reality underlying social conven-tion, and on the other his interest in the moments at which theseconventions break down completely and the reality is suddenlyviolently disclosed, as in the extreme case of war. One situation isdeveloped in several stories as a symbol of such covert aggression."Persecution"47 is a typical instance.

In the earlier tales of violence the persecution of individuals wasgenerally public. Now the surface of the lives described is apparentlyunremarkable, normal and quite satisfactory. "Persecution" openswith a statement of general hostility towards Anica, the wife in oneof these ostensibly unexceptionable marriages, and criticism of herhaving left her husband: "No one could understand why Anica, thewife of Andrija Zerekovic, one day left her home and husband.There was no obvious reason or reasonable justification for such anaction."48

This story offers an example of the balance between individualexperience and generalization that typifies Andric's technique ofcharacterization. The descriptions of both wife and husband consistvery largely of generalization: "One of those strong, shapely girlswho are afraid of growing and showing their beauty . . .";49 "It isnot a rare occurrence . . . for the eldest sister to stay at home . . .Such a girl is left without any personal life . . .";50 "That is one ofthose all-powerful laws in our social relations . . .";51 "It was one ofthose marriages . . .".52

The generalization is deliberately intensified in this story toheighten the contrast between the familiarity of the pattern, theexpectations of outsiders and the reality of the marriage itself."Everything went as God commands and as people imagine andexpect."53

The nature of the harassment to which Anica is exposed is thendescribed. The first hints lie in the way her husband looks on herarrival in his household as a new acquisition, the crowning touch to aperfectly successful life. He likes to refer to "[his] wife" as often aspossible in conversation with others, implying that he is moreconcerned with the sound of the word as a boost to his public imagethan with the woman herself. As he lies beside her at night he falls


sweetly asleep in the knowledge that she belongs entirely to him, ishis property just as his house is. The narrator comments, hi anaphoristic general observation typical of Andric:

But great dangers are hidden in so complete a realization of adesire, and the greatest lies in the new desire which appears in theplace of the old one . . . Who knows what the existence of the firstone was protecting us from, as long as it was within us, tormentingus, alive and unrealized?54

In his new, perfect life, Andrija discovers an entirely newdimension: for the first time he, who has always adapted himself tothe expectations of the outside world, is able to speak quite openlywith no thought or regard for his audience. A pattern of behaviourthen establishes itself between the couple, in which she listenssilently to all he has to say while he holds forth, no longer aware ofher except as a silent presence, a necessary stimulus. In this torrentof words, then, Andrija builds up an increasingly exaggerated andgrotesque sense of his own importance. At first Anica listens,without reacting, but gradually she comes to feel increasinglyoffended by his onslaught of self-congratulatory fabrication. Theterms in which she experiences this form of persecution are similarto those used to describe more blatant forms of degradation in someof the earlier stories:

It seemed degrading . . . she felt insulted that he thought he couldgive his imagination free rein before her, as though before alifeless object or mindless creature . . . She felt like someone whowas being ill-treated, and ill-treated in a heartless, underhand, butostensibly innocent and permissible manner. She was ashamedbecause of it all ... This profound feeling of humiliation andshame hurt and stung her insupportably, more and more withevery day . . .55

Anica's breaking point is described poignantly: "The years wouldhave passed; if she did not succumb, she would survive them,silently; she would survive the years, but she could not survive thehours and minutes."56

What is at stake here is more than the portrayal of the idiosyncra-tic behaviour of one individual. It is a reflection of a common aspect

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of human relationships in which one individual dominates another,exploiting the other's passivity and denying his or her right todevelop a distinct personality.

This type of aggression exists everywhere, but the institution ofmarriage offers a unique opportunity for its expression. Likephysical violence, psychological violence to the dignity of anotherhuman being can be provoked equally by the weaker party'svulnerability, a sense of inadequacy in the aggressor or by adestructive urge with no apparent cause.

Marriage also offers a situation in which an individual's fantasiescan be played out and his need for illusion to a certain extentsatisfied. A ritualized pattern of behaviour is established which thepartner accepts, although his or her own individuality may fromtime to time flare up and make its own demands. As in so manyother forms of human contact, each actor is locked in his ownsolitude and "communication" is possible only within accepted,stylized bounds, which always threaten to break down.

Marriage in these stories can be seen as a nucleus of society. Therules governing human behaviour are no different, except in scale.

It may be seen that there is a general development from the storiespublished between the wars. The central characters in them wereportrayed as having placed themselves "outside" society by what wasregarded as their "derangement". Now, the portraits are of peoplewho appear to be playing a "normal" part in society but who aresubject in their private lives to the same kind of aggressive ordefensive drives, the same need for illusion, the same kind of uneaseand fear. The existence of a norm outside them from which they arefelt to deviate in one way or another is similarly implied. The needsof these characters are expressed in terms of "sickness" whichhumiliates and shames their partners.

Another example of socially acceptable violence is that done to anindividual personality by his having to conform to the requirementsof his public life, of having to subordinate his own interests anddesires to those of his superiors. Alternatively, a man's publicposition may offer him the opportunity of malicious, covert andsocially acceptable violence to others. In these cases, any violenceinflicted on others carries with it the fear of retribution. Thisincreases the individual's tyranny in his moments of confidence but


is a source of constant anxiety, particularly when he is no longerprotected by his public role, when he is alone at night. Whether thedistortion of the protagonist's personality results from his capacity toinflict misery or is compensation for his own subordination, theeffect is the same. The distortion of the personality through thecircumstances of his public life will at some point seek to regain abalance which may well be seen by the outside world as madness.The implication is that the organization of social life is itself a formof madness which cannot correspond to or control the true facts ofhuman existence.

The striking common feature of all the stories portraying thesevarious kinds of violence is that its vehicle is speech. It is throughwords that Andrija persecutes his wife; another character compen-sates for the humiliation of his working life as a civil servant; aconsul exerts power over his clients. A supervisor on a state farmtyrannizes an employee through words which alternate with unpre-dictable periods of silence.

There are references throughout Andric's works to the power ofwords for good or evil, one of the earliest examples being the "Bridgeon the Zepa". One story, published in 1954, is entitled simply"Words".57 This time the focal point is not the power of words buttheir communicative value, their capacity to establish contactbetween human beings. The story gives two contrasting examples ofthe use of words: the narrator describes his meeting on a train withan old school-friend who greets him with a torrent of meaninglesswords describing the surface events of his life since they last met.The narrator soon ceases to hear the words and pursues his ownthoughts, reminded by this onslaught of a quite different approachto speech. At one time he had lived in a small hotel in Paris, in aroom next to an old Austrian Jewish refugee couple. When the oldman eventually died, his wife told the narrator the strange tale ofhow her thirty years of contented married life had been completelysilent. She did not remember her husband saying anything beyondwhat was strictly necessary in their day-to-day affairs. The result wasthat they both quite lost the habit of conversation. And then, on hisdeath-bed, the old man had suddenly called on her for comfort andimplored her to speak to him, to say anything, just to talk. But shewas by now incapable of finding a single word for him. Their life

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together had been an example of real communication and understan-ding, more profound than may be expressed in words. Yet the needof some proof of this communication was felt at the end in order togive it a different kind of reality, identifiable and in some wayenduring by being given form.

One important story, "The People of Osatica",58 explores arelated idea: the extent to which actions are seen to be "real" and"true" only in so far as they are recorded in words.

Andric will often begin a work with an account of its geographicalsetting, which has a symbolic dimension. In this story, the village ofOsatica is described as being situated both on a hill and in a hollow,because of the mountains which rise up above it. Everythingdepends on the point of view of the observer. The villagers also havea long tradition of telling stories in order to bolster their sense oftheir own importance. This is typified by the tale of a certain"Hassim":

. . . that story is not only more beautiful than ugly reality, it willlast longer than Hassim would have lasted had he stayed in thevillage, and it is worth far more than he was ever worth to thevillagers while he was alive.59

These ideas, of relativity and the superiority of the work of artover ordinary experience, colour the story. It portrays a villager whoperforms a daring feat when he climbs to the top of the churchtower, but his achievement is unreal as long as it is not recognizedand confirmed by others. Eventually he himself begins to doubt itsreality. A counterpoint to the relativity and anxiety which mark thevillagers' lives is provided by the craftsman who comes to install across on the church tower. While the villagers need public, spokenconfirmation of their exploits, the craftsman works silently in a darkroom. His craft is its own justification, requiring no words to give iteither significance or, indeed, reality. The craftsman's occupation isprivileged, on the side of the positive forces of life. He is at one withhis task in which confusion and chance are eliminated: "Everythingaround you works with you and helps you . . . [your work] isstrengthened and grows out of itself like a plant from a seed carefullysown, for which everything has been foreseen."60 In all these cases,the words do not themselves carry meaning. They fulfil a function,


which may be to give "reality" equally to an actual occurrence or toan illusion or to give a form, not in itself "true" or "false", to anunderlying "grain of truth" about human experience.

Another aspect of the power of words is the subject of one of thestories from this period examining children's insights into the adultworld. The child Lazar, in "On Bad Terms with the World",61 likesto listen to adults talking "not because of what they said, as he didnot understand much of that, but because of their behaviour andway of speaking".62 One word he overhears captures his imaginationparticularly because of the mysterious meaning it evidently has forthe people who use it: in speaking of someone they know theydescribe him as "suspect". Lazar becomes obsessed with the wordand tries in every way he can think of to discover exactly what theconcept entails. The explanation he is given fascinates him withoutreally explaining. He is told that a suspect person is someone whohas spoken some forbidden word. The boy is intrigued by the notionof a person to all appearances like everyone else, but cut off, isolatedfrom the rest of the world. He decides to try to cross the frontier ofsuspicion himself, and thereby gain access to the other, mysterious,sinister side of life. One day, after lengthy preparation, Lazar shutshimself in a room alone, to utter the word that will place himirrevocably the other side of the dividing line, that will put him "onbad terms with the world". There is something irresistibly compell-ing about the darker forces from which everyone around the childtries to protect him, but of which he is nevertheless aware. The childfeels excluded from the adult world by the existence of forces andideas he cannot understand. It emerges from this story that his senseof exclusion would be more tolerable if there were some good reasonfor it, and so the child deliberately chooses to cut himself off, thusproviding himself with a clear, logical and comprehensible pattern ofcause and effect. His situation is of course no different from that ofany adult who searches all his life for some explanation of hisconfusion and sense of isolation, in the same way as he seeks rationalexplanations for the vagaries of chance.

The craftsman in Osatica is able to escape from anxiety and chancein the clarity and logic of his concrete task. This opportunity is notavailable to most people. What is accessible, however, is the world offantasy, a world controlled by the workings of the imagination.

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Where words are shown to be often an instrument of destruction, thesilent, private escape into a world of ideas is presented as salvation.

Children in particular, the major part of whose lives is devoted toplaying games, are shown to accept the illusory world of theimagination wholeheartedly. It is not always a source of joy, oftenactivated as it is by an uneasy awareness of incomprehensible forces.

There are two somewhat similar stories from this period in whichchildren are taken out of their ordinary, everyday context on anouting: in both cases to a ruined fortress, one of which is in Belgradeand contains the mausoleum of a Turkish Grand Vizier. Thesubstance of each story is a dream involving characters associatedwith the places visited. The dreams are vivid and demonstrate on theone hand the potent associations carried by ancient buildings, and onthe other the fertility of a child's imagination.

The temperament of the children through whose eyes have beenseen all the stories mentioned so far is strikingly similar, and itsparticular predilections are developed in the story called "Panor-ama",63 which contains the least equivocal statement of the positivepower of the imagination.

This tale describes a source of great excitement in the childhood ofthe first-person narrator. For about a year during the boy's school-days in Sarajevo there was a permanent "Panorama of the world": aseries of still photographs which could be seen enlarged andbrilliantly vivid through a series of special binoculars arranged in acircle. The photographs would be rotated at intervals so that eachspectator could look at each one in turn.

For the child the world seen through these binoculars - Rio deJaneiro, Lisbon, Ceylon - became the only reality - "real, glorious,bright life" - and the life of his little Bosnian town seemed "like abad dream". The pictures extended and incorporated all that theboy read in books and dreamed and constructed in his imagination.

This game of joy and enthusiasm was worth gold to me, and notmerely a nickel coin. For, in fact, I gave all that was required forthe game from myself and I brought it all out of myself. For manyboys of my age anything, even less significant than this primitivepanorama, could provide the starting point for such a game, everymeans, even the poorest, is welcome to them as a way of spreading


out before them all that makes them happy or uneasy, and whichfills them, completely, for it grows with them, through all theyears of their growing.64

The style of this story conveys its mood of excitement throughshort sentences and exclamations. The child's reactions are evokedby his constantly relating what he sees to his own childish experi-ence.

The magic of the panorama - and of the world of the imaginationaltogether - lies in the fact that it can be endlessly expanded. Thechild comments on some of the people in one of the photographs:

People who had all they needed. I had always thought about thiskind of life, this kind of people, and as I thought about myself andmy family, always regretted that we were not like that, and I usedto wonder how we could become like them. And now, here werepeople like that standing before me - a father, mother anddaughter - as though they would at any moment start to walk andtalk. The expression on their faces and their gestures captured onthe picture made it easy for me to imagine them walking andspeaking, although they were silent and motionless. And I didimagine them! And it was better like that, for if they had reallyhad the ability to walk and the gift of speech, they would quicklyhave said what they had to say and crossed the sunny avenue andthe whole spell would have been broken . . . As it was, theywalked when I wanted them to and said that I wanted when Iwanted. And it had no end, no bitter hint of an end!65

The child's reactions to the pictures and the leaps and bounds ofhis imagination convey a great deal about a general attitude to lifeand art which is Andric's own. In connection with the picture of afortress in Rio, for example, the child's attention is caught particu-larly by a cannon:

A cannon! In the joy of existence which these pictures meant tome, this was the tragic note without which, it seemed, there wasneither joy nor existence. This note suggested that every joy andeach existence could at any moment be transformed into itsopposite, and that was what made them so elusive and - sowonderful and precious.66

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The child participates to the maximum in the pictures which passbefore his eyes. He stays on in the darkened room until he isdiscovered by the manager, but not until he has seen all the picturesseveral times. The experience is not, however, limited to the timespent watching the panorama itself:

That square with its flowers, water, dignified stone buildings,with its beautiful, carefree people, provoked the greatest disquietin me, particularly at night, when it came to life in my dreams orhalf-dreams. For you should know that the real life of thesepictures began only later, when I returned home and lay down inmy bed.67

It is, then, at home in his bed that the child's imagination bringsto life the characters and scenes he has observed with such excitedconcentration. And they not only acquire a life of their own, but actas a stimulus to thoughts about many other different aspects of life.

As far as the outside world is concerned, the child's absorption inhis imaginary world is often a source of resentment: seeing that hedoes not belong completely to their world, people tend to try to draghim back into it. And the narrator himself sees that there is anotherside to his involvement in the vivid life of the pictures: "Because ofthis passion for the world and life of the pictures, which dominatedme completely, I became the debtor of this real world and guilty inthe life which I had to live."68 These words are reminiscent ofstatements about the life of the artist elsewhere in Andric's work.

Eventually the panorama leaves:

It went, and left me disappointed and alone, with a questionwhich cannot be answered and will not be put aside. - Which isthe world, the real world, with living people and their mutualrelations expressed in possessions and force and power, in moneyand calculation, and which is the image of the world, with itsriches, joy and beauty? - There is no explanation or answer. Theyears pass; with new experiences and new journeys the questionacquires hundreds of different aspects, but still remains withoutan answer.69

The question remains unanswered, but the vivid world of thepictures stays brilliantly alive; more durable, often, than the real


world of everyday experience: "Forgetfulness, which erased so manyliving faces and places, so many real delights and upsets, had nopower over this world."70

The narrator describes how he used to imagine the progress of thecharacters from the pictures, and from time to time himself, in thetowns and landscapes from the panorama. His musings have differ-ent forms and a range of tones.

The conclusion of the story offers an apt description of Andric'sattitude to story, legend, the life of the imagination and art ingeneral:

So these pictures from the world of my panorama appeared anddisappeared in a flash. And they will perhaps appear again, eitherthese same or different ones. You should not expect anything tooconfidently in these matters, but you may hope for everything.This was the nature of the love that flared up in me once, as Iwatched in that closed and half-lit room pictures of towns andlandscapes, and it was never extinguished or diminished, but grewwith me, not losing its energy or brilliance over the years. Thatpassion was costly and difficult, but I paid for it gladly, withoutsparing myself, no longer with nickel coins, but with the best partof myself. And yet, I am its debtor, and shall always remain so, forthe pictures of the world which I saw or glimpsed cannot ever beadequately paid for. They carry me with them and raise me up,and link me to life, and show me constantly that, as I wanderedthrough the world over the years, I did not waste my strength invain.71

These passages have been quoted at length as they are an explicitaccount of the role of art and the imagination in Andric's life. Theyhave the quality of his reflective prose, essays and incidental jottings.In general, in many of the stories published since the Second WorldWar, the philosophical dimension is closer to the surface. Thearchetypal characters and situations of the earlier ones emphasizedthe form given to human experience in legend and the fundamentalneeds from which it arose. Now the emphasis has shifted to anawareness of such stories explicitly as products of the imagination.With the slight change of perspective, Andric seems also to have

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acquired a new capacity to enjoy games, the creation of zanycharacters and the elaboration of pure fantasies.

An example of this tendency is the fantasy "Summer Holiday inthe South".72 In fact it is an elaboration of a recurrent idea ofAndric's found in Anxieties and Signs by the Roadside. Sometimes bythe sea, which he loved, Andric found himself thinking of theperfect salvation of simply dissolving into its salty, iodine evapora-tion.

"Summer Holiday in the South" describes a staid and apparentlyvery ordinary Austrian teacher on holiday on the Southern Adriaticcoast. The sensation of renewal and refreshment from the sea, sunand salt air is described in physical terms: "Refreshed by swimming,the sun and the sea-water, he felt as though he were dressed in light,festive, flower-white and scented clothes, and that he was himselfblossoming and growing together with them and with everythingaround him."73 Increasingly, the teacher becomes susceptible totricks of the air, and the smoke of the cigarette that seemsintoxicating in these surroundings: he begins to feel himself part ofthe heady atmosphere itself. An echo of the exhilaration of the childin "The Miracle" can be felt here. One day the attraction of thesevisions becomes irresistible and he steps into the brilliance of thelight. The process is described with Andric's favourite image of abridge:

The tops of the thick green trees, which were already beneathhim, carried in themselves reflections of the brilliance that linkedand equalized everything on the earth, on the sea and in the sky.That brilliance was a marvellous, steep, swaying bridge alongwhich a man could climb without gravity and without limit . . ,74

And so the teacher disappears without trace, mystifying not onlyhis wife and the local police but the whole population of the littletown, who find the uncertainty surrounding the whole curious affairdisconcerting and uncomfortable.

This piece is similar to "Jelena, the Woman Who Was Not" and"The Ivory Woman"75 of the inter-war period. It is the expression ofan abstract idea in concrete terms, suggesting the force with whichquite abstract notions and vague impressions can impose themselveson the imagination, demanding to be recognized as no less real than


"reality". Increasingly, in the post-War years, Andric seems toexplore such ideas and develop them to their full potential. Theconscious self-observation of the writer at work and the increaseddetachment of these stories give rise to an increasingly ironic, oftengently humorous, tone and to a tendency towards allegory.

In many stories published since the Second World War there is aclear allegorical dimension, an obvious example being "Panorama".It is true to say that Andric had shown a predilection for allegoryearly in his writing, and a tendency to present his stories frequentlyalmost in the form of a parable, an enigma, with a meaning to bededuced from the material. In the post-War period several works areclearly allegorical. The most obvious is a little piece reminiscent of afable by Aesop, "Aska and the Wolf'.76 It tells the story of a lambwith an exceptional talent for ballet, whose passionate instinctivedance so astonishes and delights the wolf poised to pounce on herthat he watches enraptured until he is himself shot by shepherdssearching for the lamb. The tale includes several general observa-tions:

We do not even know how much strength and how much potentialare hidden inside every living being. And we cannot guess howmuch we are capable of. We exist and pass on, without everrealizing all that we could have been and done.77

The main concern of the story, however, is with the power of artover death and the almost superhuman strength of the artisticimpulse if the artist is prepared to risk all in his commitment.

Another plainly allegorical tale from this period is "The Tale ofthe Vizier's Elephant".78 The introduction to the story makes itsfigurative quality explicit in a general statement about the particularnature of Bosnian stories:

Bosnian villages and towns are full of stories. In these tales, for themost part imaginary, beneath the incredible events and ofteninvented names, the real and unrecognized history of that region,its living people and long-dead generations, is hidden. Those arethose Oriental lies of which the Turkish proverb states that theyare "truer than any truth".79

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This general statement is then illustrated by a reference to aparticularly elusive and strange breed of Bosnian trout. The reader isnow prepared to accept the strangeness of the ensuing story and tolook beneath its unreal surface for the "grain of truth" around whichit has been built.

The story is woven through with references to the telling of talesand blatant lies, the discrepancy between an event and its laterelaboration, the need to invent what cannot be known. One of thesubsidiary variations on the main theme is quite incidental, butcarries wide implications. In the same way that Cerzelez had grownlarger in the stories of his heroism, so that the people weredisappointed when they actually saw him* so the Vizier's youngelephant in this tale seems larger than he really is because he reflectsthe people's fear of the Vizier himself. Indeed, the fact that theawesome ruler's pet is actually an elephant is an illustration of thisprocess. What is suggested by these various references is the familiartruth that the words people use are not the substance of theircommunication; they are not themselves the meaning, but only apointer to that meaning.

The main line of this story is, then, the tale of a particularlyruthless vizier whose arrival in Travnik is preceded by terribleaccounts of his cruelty, but who is himself never seen in the town atall. This fact simply increases the townspeople's anxiety, so thatwhen the Vizier acquires an elephant (the fashionable way ofdemonstrating one's position in Turkey at this time is to own anexotic wild beast), their resentment of the innocent creature is themore intense. There are several elements of importance in thedevelopment of the story such as the obvious innocence of theanimal, which causes havoc in the narrow streets of Travnik becauseof its size and youthful exuberance, its need of play and exercise. Ithas much of the quality of the various young girls in Andric's works,from Mara the Pasha's concubine on. Fresh and innocent, on thethreshold of life, they are caught up in events over which they haveno control and which eventually destroy them. For all its size, theelephant is invested here with a kind of primeval grace which givesthe story a humorous dimension and at the same time a specialpoignancy, and eliminates the danger of sentimentality which oftenaccompanies allegory. What the story chiefly concentrates on is


building up the atmosphere of an occupied land, the fear andbitterness, the hatred and helplessness of the population caught in acomplete impasse. The townspeople react in different ways to theoppression, depending on their personal power and position. Themost powerless are the most vociferous in their resentment, thewealthy are cautious and cunning, while the youngest are able to seenot only that the elephant is innocent, but that the Vizier himself isvulnerable.

The central point of the story is made in a manner typical ofAndric. The narrative focuses on one character, Aljo, who sits on ahillside above the town, and from this new perspective is able clearlyto see the nature of the»impasse in which he and his fellow-citizensare trapped:

This was not a head accustomed to thinking sharply and clearly,but today, here, a small ray reached even his brain, a weak andbrief ray of consciousness about the kind of town and country andempire it was in which he, Aljo, and thousands like him, a fewmore foolish and a few cleverer, some richer and many poorer,were living; the kind of life they were living, a meagre andunworthy life which was passionately loved and dearly paid for,and, if you thought about it, it was not worth it, it really was notworth it.80

As Aljo sees it, there are two possible ways a man can react to thissituation. He expresses the dilemma simply:

Whoever is brave and proud, quickly and easily loses his liveli-hood and his freedom, his property and his life, but whoever bowshis head and succumbs to fear, he loses so much of himself, fearconsumes him to such an extent that his life is worth nothing.81

Once Aljo has clearly and definitively observed the dilemma, heresolves it instinctively. He goes back down the hill to become oncemore the old Aljo, who loves a good joke. In its limited way, with thescope for action at its disposal, Aljo's spirit triumphs. He has shownmore courage than his fellow-citizens in his willingness to complainto the Vizier about the elephant and, when this mission provesimpossible, after his initial reaction his old zest for life returns. In hismoment of vision, however, Aljo has identified the essential dilemma

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of defeat and occupation which is expressed in the Yugoslav oral epictradition: tragic and noble death - epitomized by the self-sacrifice ofthe hero Milos Obilic, who died killing the Turkish Sultan - orsurvival, in itself ignoble but redeemed by humour, symbolized bythe figure of Prince Marko.

This story is a particularly apt illustration of its introductoryremarks. The wry humour with which it treats the surface content,the elephant and the townspeople's inept reactions, cannot relievethe underlying account of the price of life under occupation which isvividly evokes.

We can perhaps, then, identify in this period an increasedtendency to allegory. There has been an allegorical dimensionpresent in many earlier works as well, through the principle ofstories gathering around a few essential myths or legends, andthrough the generalized character of many individual incidents andfigures. Characters and situations tend to stand for somethingbeyond themselves. This trend is allied to the other that dominatesin this period: an increased interest, explicit and self-conscious, inexploring the world of the imagination, a sense of the writerwatching himself at work. It is possible to see the particularlycomplex texture of Devil's Yard as arising out of a combination ofthese two tendencies of Andric's mature years.

(iii) The House On Its Own*2

In 1960 Andric published a short piece entitled "Faces",83 whichlent its name to the collection of stories published in the same year.It introduces the altered perspective which seems generally to markthe writer's attitude to short-story writing in this period. It alsoprovides a preliminary sketch for the collection of stories publishedposthumously as The House On Its Own. "Faces" begins with anintroductory passage, which can be seen as the starting point for thelonger collection:

. . . Ever since I can remember, the human face has been for methe most brightly lit and most attractive fragment of the world thatsurrounds me. I remember landscapes and cities, and I canconjure them up in my memory when I want and keep them


before me for as long as I want, but human faces which I haveseen, both waking and in my sleep, come to me of their ownaccord and remain under my gaze for an uncomfortably long orpainfully short time; they live beside me or vanish capriciouslyand completely, so that no effort of the memory can ever summonthem again . . . And while I look at towns and landscapes throughmy own experiences and as a part of myself, there is no end to mydebate and coming to terms with human faces . . .

Singly, or in procession, human faces appear before me. Somespring up silently, of their own accord or through some causewhich is unknown to me, or some come, as though in response toan agreed signal, on hearing a word or phrase that alwaysaccompanies them.84

This introduction is followed by four examples of the kind of facesthat appear to the writer and the kind of response they arouse inhim. In order to enter imaginatively into the experience of otherhuman beings, the artist must remove himself - create in himself anameless silent space.

The essential elements of this piece provide the basis for the moredeveloped reflection on the process of artistic creation which TheHouse On Its Own represents. The work is perhaps more interestingin its overall significance than for its individual stories, which vary insubstance and quality. Together they offer a comprehensive accountof the way Andric selected his material, or rather, in keeping withthe image that governs this work, his material selected him. The ideaof "characters in search of an author" has, of course, interested anumber of writers from Sterne to Pirandello and Unamuno. In histreatment of it Andric does not enter into any theoretical discussionof "truth" and "reality" but develops the theme on a literal level; hischaracters are all "remembered".

The first idea to emerge from the introduction to The House On ItsOwn is that creation is possible only under certain conditions. Thefirst of these necessary conditions is isolation. As we know fromelsewhere in Andric's work, solitude was a state he chose andsought. The description of the house in Sarajevo where the work isset suggests the ideal environment in which the process of artisticcreation can take place. The house is described with Andric's typical

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care for precise detail. Its character is significant in view of thewriter's long-standing rejection of the arbitrary division of the worldinto East and West: it was built in 1887, when Central Europeanmodes were being mixed with the older Turkish style of building.The furnishings express a similar mixture of styles and periods,suggesting that the inhabitants were people who "did not care muchabout the external appearance of things, or their names, but knewhow to make use of all that these things could offer for a modest,peaceful and comfortable life to those who cared more for life thanfor what could be thought, spoken or written about it."85 Such anenvironment does not intrude into the life and thoughts of thoseliving in it; it offers an ideally peaceful background. "Here thatpeace reigns which we desire constantly, but achieve in our lives onlywith difficulty, and which we equally frequently seek to escape,without real need and to our own detriment."86

The next condition Andric postulates is the need for the artist tocreate in himself a state as near as possible to the tranquil neutralityof his physical environment, to make of himself a perfectly passivevacuum into which ideas can flow. This neutrality is an idea thatrecurs in Andric's reflections. Two passages in Signs by the Roadsideuse the image of the photographic plate, and suggest that the artisthas to create in himself the negative of what he wishes to convey inorder to project it in positive form on to the imagination of hisreaders. Here, the idea is developed:

An ordinary looking day is beginning for everyone, includingmyself. Only, while others sit down to a regular activity, with amore or less clear aim in front of them, I gaze absent-mindedly atthe pictures and objects around me as though they were strangeand new, and feigning awkwardness, I wait for my idea to begin inme. With naive cunning (whom am I deceiving, and why?) I seekthe thread of my story, broken off the previous day, endeavouringto look like a man who is not seeking anything, I listen to hearwhether the voice of the story can be heard within me, ready toturn myself completely into the story or part of the story, into ascene or one of its characters. And less than that: into an instant ina scene, into one single thought or movement of that character. Inthis endeavour, I circle round my target, indifferent and


apparently innocent, like a hunter who turns his head away fromthe bird he is hunting but without in fact letting it out of his sightfor an instant.

I have to proceed like this; it has become second nature to me.For the moment that a fragment of my everyday consciousnessintrudes and I acknowledge my intention and call my aim by itstrue name, I know what will happen. Thinner than the leastsubstantial mist, all this atmosphere of nameless dream willdisperse and I shall find myself in this familiar room, just as I amin my identity card or in the list of occupants of the flats where Ilive, a man with recognized features, without any connectionwhatever with the characters and scenes in the story I wasthinking about until a moment before . . . And then . . . my daywhich has barely begun will suddenly turn grey and, instead of mystory and my work, there will be opened up before me theintolerable triviality of an existence which bears my name but isnot mine, and the deadly desert of time which suddenly extin-guishes all the joy of life, and steadily kills each one of us.87

In his receptive state, however, the artist may also be pursued byideas and characters which demand his attention regardless of whathe had planned to write that day:

But it can happen that my day starts differently as well, that I donot lie in wait or anticipate my stories, but they seek me out, andmany of them at the same time. In a half-sleep, before I haveopened my eyes, like the yellow and pink stripes on the closedblind of my window, there begin to tremble in me of their ownaccord the broken threads of unfinished stories. They offerthemselves, waken me and disturb me. And later, when I amdressed and sit down to work, characters from these stories andfragments of their conversations, reflections and actions do notcease to beset me, with a mass of clearly delineated detail. Now Ihave to defend myself from them and hide, grasping as manydetails as I can and throwing whatever I can down on to thewaiting paper.88

We have seen elsewhere in Andric's works that his introductionsserve to create a certain frame of mind in the reader, which will

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determine his reading of the work to follow. This account of thepassivity of the creative artist raises the question of what kind ofcharacter and scene particularly imposes itself on the artist's mind?The work thus offers an explicit expression of the question runningthrough all Andric's writings: what kind of stories capture theimagination and demand to be handed down through the genera-tions, because they seem to reflect some general truth about thecondition of mankind?

For the most part the stories that follow this introduction areportraits, while a minority place more emphasis on the situation theydescribe. Because of the introduction, we are bound to read thestories with their general significance in mind, so that on the wholeAndric's familiar techniques for conveying generalization are not soobtrusive here as in some other works. There is a reminder at thebeginning of each piece of the central image of the work; the way inwhich each character "visits" the writer is described. All possiblevariations on this theme are used, so that the device does not becomeoverworked but is exploited with the lightness of touch and gentleirony which pervade the whole volume, despite the tragic nature ofsome of the individual tales. Such a procedure is typical of Andric'slater short-story writing in its self-conscious observation of the artistat work.

The effect of this introduction is, then, to concentrate theattention of the reader not solely on the anecdote or characterdescribed, but on its function in the writer's imagination. In thislight, the eleven pieces in the collection all offer examples of a "type"of subject matter which presents itself to the artist as suitable forsome specific reason. A further dimension is added by the fact thatsome of the characters portrayed suggest their own reasons. Theseare functions which have been at one time or another ascribed toliterature, but which Andric dismisses with characteristic irony andscepticism.

Two of the portraits describe the type of ostensibly "unbalanced"character who always particularly interested Andric. One is acompulsive liar and the other an hereditary alcoholic with suicidaltendencies.

The portrait of the liar, Baron Dorn, typifies the irony whichcolours most of this collection. His compulsion is described in the


terms Andric uses elsewhere of more serious psychological derange-ment. The Baron can thus stand for any of Andric's charactersregarded by society as "abnormal". He is described as a passivevehicle for deceit, which gives him the innocence associated withmany of Andric's characters who are to an extent absolved fromresponsibility even when they are the instrument of evil. TheBaron's "defect" is in any case harmless. He is resented because heexaggerates a universal human tendency to deceit. This is unac-ceptable because it reminds others of their own fault and theirhypocrisy in condemning the Baron, and because it underminestheir tenacious hold on what they choose to regard as the "truth".Their condemnation of the Baron presupposes the existence of anobjective reality known to everyone except him, a suppositionwhich is absurd on anything but the crudest level, particularly inthe work of Andric with its recurrent theme of a lie, an illusion,being more real than any truth. Andric conveys this absurdity bystressing the arbitrary dividing line between "truth" and "false-hood". The "truth" as seen by others becomes increasingly"improbable" to the Baron. Like that of most individuals, his life ischaracterized by an endless, vain search. In his case the search isfor someone who would believe him, for the alchemy which wouldtransform "the miserable, heavy lead of his lie ... into the puregold of the one real truth".89 This image ironically reverses theconventional terms in which truth and falsehood are usuallydefined. The more conventional idea is expressed earlier in thestory in a lively account of the working of the Baron's imagination,reminiscent of Andric's description of the pure fantasy representedby the circus: "words begin to spark and set fire to each other andto light up vistas which he had not even imagined existed until thatmoment".90 The Baron is one of the characters who suggests areason why the narrator should take him seriously:

Among the traces which have been left on the cobblestones ofSarajevo, and which now often come to life and knock on mydoors and window, the story of Baron Dorn is not one of themost significant, it is not glorious or important, nor particularlytragic, but it is pathetic. A hopeless case. And that is preciselywhy he likes to call on me, because in me, he says, he has sensed

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a man who does not accept hopelessness, one who will listen tohim patiently and with understanding.91

The narrator dismisses this trust as illusory: such a character is nomore "credible" in fiction than in "reality"; the writer cannot "help"him, beyond understanding that his "hopeless case" is universal.

The reason suggested by the alcoholic in the other portrait of thiskind is still less plausible. He maintains that the narrator ought toencourage writers to bring a problem like his to the attention of theirreading public; in other words, that literature should be a vehicle forsocial comment and reform. Andric's scepticism is clear:

We talked. The conversation lasted a long time, and went the onlyway it could have gone. Roughly as though we had raised animmense stone block for a fraction of a second into the air, and letit go again to return to its original position. Many words and rapidor interrupted sentences, and all in all: nothing.92

The portrait of the alcoholic is coloured by a similar kind ofinnocence to that of the Baron. The central character has inheritedthe family tendency just as a man inherits an illness, or indeed anyphysical or mental malfunction. The individual is, then, seen as thevictim of arbitrary forces which destroy his life. The theme ofdrinking as a means of escape plays a prominent part in many ofAndric's later works, as one aspect of the broader theme of illusion.Here the theme is used to suggest three different sets of ideas: thedesire of the individual to escape from his sense of isolation andabsurdity; inherent derangement; and the more general symbolicsense in which alcoholism can stand for all the self-imposed evils ordelusions of human life.

It is easy enough to see the ideas that underlie the portraits ofthese two individuals. Two of the other pieces which are essentiallyportraits describe individuals. But in their case it is their situation,rather than their personalities, which can be seen in general terms.One portrays a relationship of love and violence which is at onceoppressive and vital, and the other the plight of a peasant girl takenfrom her devastated village by the Turks, to be sold as a slave. Thisstory is an extreme statement of the theme of captivity which runs allthrough Andric's works:


People are born to be enslaved by the enslavement of life, and todie as the slaves of illness and death. Everyone is a slave enslavedto something, for he who is sold in chains in the market-place isnot the only slave; whoever sells him and whoever buys him is alsoa slave.93

Another portrait in the collection is ostensibly simply that of anindividual and is described without any anecdote which might placethe character in a generalized situation. And yet it gradually emergesthat he does have a function in relation to others. His features are sounusual that he makes an immediate impression. He lives everyaspect of his life with verve and gusto. He is unpredictable, awkwardand yet appealing, looking boldly and mockingly on ordinarypeople, their orderliness and laws "as though he had been createdand existed simply in order to surprise and confuse people aroundhim".94 The reader's answer to the tacit question behind this wholecollection - why do some characters particularly demand attention -would in this case have to be in terms such as Andric himselfsuggests; that he is one of those people who are remembered aslarger than life and more attractive than they are in reality.

The two most developed portraits in the collection are equallycharacteristic of Andric. One concerns an historical figure - theVizier of Mostar, Alipasha Rizvanbegovic - drawn with typicalabundance of historical detail. His story focuses on one moment ofhis life: not the height of his power, but his disgrace and subsequentdeath during the campaign of Omer Pasha Latas. The suggestion isthat success and power cannot tell us much about the true nature ofhuman destiny. When the Vizier passes by the narrator's windowwith his full retinue as Lord of Hercegovina he merely waves,without stopping, but when he comes as a defeated prisoner he stopsfor a moment to exchange "a few ordinary words".

Alipasha's story, which has points of contact with the earlier"Torso", is introduced in general terms. One of the preconditions ofhuman power is that it must be at the expense of others. Alipashaachieves his ambition to be the highest authority in Hercegovinaonly after playing his role in the age-old pattern of fraternal conflict,resulting in the murder of the most determined of his brothers. Inhis own eyes he is a "firm and just" ruler, but to those he rules he is

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"arbitrary and cruel". The ironic tone in which the brief account ofAlipasha's life is given increases its generalized quality by reinfor-cing the sense of an inevitable pattern.

The point of Alipasha's story is the insight granted by the alteredperspective, when "he came to understand what remains of a manwho has suddenly lost everything, and, stripped of all, stands on hisown feet, naked and alone, against all the forces of the surroundingworld, helpless and invincible".95 The change which is described ascoming over Alipasha's physical appearance following his humilia-tion reflects the inner change. As the trappings of power fall away, sodo the man's pretensions to it. His face, when it shows any trace oflife, comes increasingly to express "the mild disorientation anddevotion of a mendicant dervish".96 Stripped like this to his humanessence, with no further pretensions to position or power, the mangradually acquires real stature. Denied the possibility of resistance,he is forced into himself and finds peace, so that he feels an urge totry to comfort and encourage the anxious villagers and townspeopleas they watch him pass instead of being himself consoled by them.From the pedestal of his suffering, as from the highest mountain, hesays that he made out and understood some truths about humanbeings and human relationships more clearly than ever before in hislife. Andric leaves the image of the fallen Vizier, forced to paradethrough Bosnia on a mangy mule, to speak for itself. Alipasha isprevented from "explaining" his new understanding when he is shotby a Turkish soldier. For Andric, a truth that could be directly toldin words would not be worth telling. Fundamental truths can beembodied only in images.

The other story of particular density, "The Circus",97 centres on achild's excitement on his first visit to a circus. The tone is similar tothat of "Panorama" and other stories presented as childhood memor-ies. The circus performance and the child's breathless concentrationare described in detail. The terms in which the child expresses theillusion of perfection conjured up for him by the circus are thosewhich characterize the search of every individual for a "better" lifeand happiness:

They knew what they wanted, and whatever they wanted theycould do. They did not need words or explanations. They did not


hesitate, they did not make mistakes . . . They moved and lived inconfidence. They knew nothing of misunderstanding or doubt. . .They had turned their backs on all that was called "life", but onlyfor the sake of a more perfect and more beautiful life. They werehappy.98

This story offers a vivid illustration of Andric's recurrent idea thatillusion is more compelling, more "real", than reality. It conveys theintoxicating power of the fleeting belief that the object of our search isattainable.

The inevitable disillusion when the performance comes to an end -"Could these things have an end? Why then it was as if they did notexist! Could beauty lie?"99 - is paralleled by the main part of the story,which describes the fate of the circus director - a tale of illness,misery, blackmail and violence belying the apparent glamour andexcitement of circus life. The circus manager apologizes for hisintrusion into the narrator's life, but explains that he has come to"complete the narrator's childhood memories".100 Andric, as always,balances one image with its opposite, because everything in life mustbe illuminated from all sides.

Other stories in this collection suggest another reason for the artist'schoice of material. It may be that the secret lives of insignificant andrejected individuals should also be illuminated through the artist'sintuition. There is a suggestion here that each individual's life isequally worthy of attention, if only because of a sense of guilt:"Because, if out of selfishness and for the sake of our own comfort weavoid hearing a person out, we shall probably have to do it later,ashamed, in an involuntary memory or a dream . . ."101

These words touch on the recurrent idea that one "must always let aman tell his story as he wants, in his own way, for every story is true atone time or another". This theme is developed in Devil's Yard. Itoccurs twice in The House On Its Own: in connection with Alipashaand in a piece entitled "The Story".102

This tale is of particular importance in this collection, itself areflection on the nature of story-telling. It deals not with the materialof art, but with narrative sjyle and technique. It describes a characterrenowned for his ability as a teller of tales. He is essentially self-effacing:

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He never talks about himself, never defends or justifies himself;he does not exaggerate or intrude. While others regularly seek toenter into my story and sometimes try to do so inappropriately andimportunately, he would, on the contrary, like me not to mentionhim at all, and if I do relate one of his jokes, he would like me notto tell anyone where it came from.103

The ideal narrator's task is difficult. He must efface himself sothat his material can speak for itself and make its full impact directlyon the reader, but at the same time his craft can add a new dimensionto the story told. One is reminded here of the description of BrotherPetar as a story-teller, and the indefinable atmosphere associatedwith the way he spoke.

The craftsman and the artist can create this atmosphere, which isengendered because what they create is npt life itself but somethingconsciously apart from life; something salvaged, at least temporarily,from the flux.

When the unobtrusive story-teller has left the room, the narratorreturns to where he had been sitting, listening to the tale:

It seemed as though he had not actually left the room, as thoughsomething of his, invisible, but alive and real, had remainedbehind him here and was continuing to talk, not in words, butdirectly, through the living sense itself of what Ibrahim-Effendihad been relating. I listen to the silence of my room speaking on,and from time to time I acknowledge with a nod the truth of whatI hear. If anyone were to see me, they would think I had gonemad. But I am listening to the very source, usually inaudible, ofall Ibrahim's stories.104

The narrator then recalls the tale his visitor had been telling him.It is a story of intense emotion and drama, conveyed through vividvisual detail without further comment.

Ibrahim has features in common with other characters from thiscollection and stands for a set of ideas familiar in Andric's work. Toothers, he seems like a man who does not really live, who cutshimself off from society just as Dorn the compulsive liar and Jakovthe drunkard had done:


Instead of so-called "real" life, whose blows he had felt while stillin his mother's womb, he built himself another reality, composedof stories. With these stories of what might have been but neverwas, which is often more truthful and more beautiful thaneverything that did happen, he shielded himself from what"really" happened around him every day. So he escaped life andcheated fate. He has been lying for nearly fifty years here in thecemetery on Alifakovac. But he lives on here and there, from timeto time, as a story.105

These last words touch on three related reasons for the telling ofstories which we have met in Andric's work: the notion that "whatmight have been" can be more "truthful" than what really occurs;the idea of "cheating fate" - like "the legendary Scheherezade"; andthe idea of the "immortality" of characters in a work of fiction. Therange of stories in this collection, and the reflections which emergefrom its setting, make it an account of Andric's short-story telling inminiature.

4

The Novels

The bulk of Andric's fiction consists of stories and, while some ofthese are quite long, it seems that the shorter, more concentratedform attracted him most. Nevertheless, it is for the three novelspublished immediately after the Second World War that Andric ischiefly known, certainly abroad and probably also at home. Duringthe War Andric declined to publish anything as long as theoccupation lasted, so that it was at least partly chance which drovehim to evolve the longer form, arranging the shorter units into morecomplex wholes.

Two of the novels, The Bridge on the Drina1 and Omer PashaLatas2 (published after Andric's death), have the same basicstructure. They are a collection of individual unilinear entities linkedtogether around a central theme. They reflect Andric's characteristictendency to work in cycles of interlinked but independent units. Themodel for his approach is clearly that of the traditional ballads. Theeffect of these songs is cumulative, and their meaning lies not somuch in the individual ballads as in their embodiment of a broad setof ideas and values. Andric's first published story, "Alija-Derzelez",is an example on a small scale of the exploitation of his model. Onthe broadest scale, the whole body of Andric's works can be seen towork to the same end.

. . . everything that exists is one single reality, and it is only ourinstincts and the irregular reactions of our senses that lead us tosee in the variety of phenomena in which this one reality ismanifested separate, distinct worlds, different in both theircharacteristics and their essence. Those worlds do not exist. Thereis only one reality, with its eternal ebb and flow of laws which areknown to us only in part but which are always the same.3


These words from "Conversation with Goya" may serve as adefinition of Andric's works, which all approach the same core offundamental issues of existence from different angles and perspec-tives.

What this means can be seen clearly in the case of the three novelspublished in 1945. For all their varied subject matter they areconcerned with the same issues, but the angle of vision is verydifferent in each one. The Bridge on the Drina presents a broad time-scale and portrays the history of a town over four centuries. InBosnian Story4 the focus is narrowed to a small group of people over aseven-year period, while in The Woman from Sarajevo5 Andricconcentrates on the fate of one individual. The course of theprotagonist's life in this last work is determined by a fundamentalanxiety. A similar kind of anxiety underlies each of the other novelsand colours all their various components. Their significance doesnot, then, lie in the abundance of detail that forms their surface, butin the cumulative effect of the ideas behind them and the wholephilosophical frame of reference, in which all the details are of onlyprovisional and partial importance.

The Bridge on the Drina

The novel was written quickly, between July 1942 and December1943. An outline of some fifty pages has been preserved, as well asjottings treating various aspects of the subject matter. As we haveseen, "The Rzav Hills" and "The Bridge on the Zepa" form part ofthis preliminary process.

The Bridge on the Drina is the chronicle not of a family but of asmall town, and in particular of the focal point of that town: thebridge over the River Drina. The town is Visegrad on the easternedge of Bosnia, near the border with Serbia. The chronicle traces itshistory from the sixteenth century to the First World War, and usesthe bridge to bind the individual chapters and stories together. Theemphasis is on the evolution of a common mentality in the town,deriving from common experience and a common heritage of legendand anecdote. The population of the town is mixed, but Andricchooses in this case to stress the coherence of the whole. This isachieved partly by the time-scale, but also by Andric's basic

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intention in the work. This is to contrast the transience andinsignificance of individual human life with the broader perspectiveof life as itself enduring, a constant ebb and flow. On this level thebridge provides not only a structural but also a symbolic link.

Each chapter or anecdote is in some way connected with thebridge. It is the focal point of the town, and most important eventsoccur on or near it. Such an apparently simple structural functioncontributes also to the main direction of the work, which depicts thegrowth, from a series of disparate events, of a common heritage.

The movement of the chronicle through the four centuries itdescribes is not steady. The first event of major importance to thepeople of Visegrad, the building of the bridge in the mid-sixteenthcentury, is described in detail over three chapters; the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, when no important historical eventsaffected the town, pass by in a single chapter; the nineteenth centurycovers ten chapters, and the years from 1900 to 1914, the remainderof the work, a further nine chapters. Such a scheme allows theauthor to describe the main events affecting the life of the town indetail and also to suggest an awareness of history as never uniformlywell-known or related. In his account of the building of the bridge heis able vividly to present the discrepancy between the accountswhich remain in the popular consciousness and the events themsel-ves. The static nature of the centuries of Ottoman rule is thenhighlighted by the changes which take place during the nineteenthcentury and increase in speed and scope with the Austrian annexa-tion of Bosnia and Hercegovina at the end of that century. Theimpression created in this way is that in the life of a community, as inthe life of an individual, the passing of time cannot be measuredstrictly chronologically. Some periods of time pass more slowly ormore rapidly than others; some appear longer because they are morefilled with important events and changes; others count as nothing,for they contain no events by which to measure their passing. Butthe clearest implication of the broad time-scale is the predictable onein Andric's work: that, for all these events and changes, nothing ofsignificance alters.

The Bridge on the Drina begins with a description of the town ofVisegrad at an unspecified moment in its history, complete with allits legends, its traditional children's games and its established


customs. This is the "personality" of the town, not radically alteredby historical changes, and inherited by the passing generations. Thegeographical setting is described as the first factor to influence thementality of the population. Visegrad has grown up in a wide fertilevalley surrounded on three sides by gentle hills and rich farmingland. The townspeople have a reputation for being carefree, quick tospend their money and enjoy life. The life of the town, despite themajor historical upheavals which affect it, is steady and on the wholeharmonious.

Such a description is arbitrary and offers no objective informationabout the real nature of the town of Visegrad. It reflects onlyAndric's intention to emphasize a harmony which is suggested to bealso a consequence of the presence of the bridge.

The bridge is taken for granted in the life of the town. But it istaken for granted in a positive way. It links the town with itssuburbs: "In fact, when one says 'links' it is as accurate as saying:the sun rises in the morning so that we are able to see around us andcomplete our necessary business, and sets in the evening so that wemay sleep and rest from our daily toil."6 For the bridge is the onlypermanent and safe crossing-point on the whole central and upperDrina, and the vital link in the road connecting Bosnia with Serbiaand, through Serbia, with the rest of the Ottoman Empire. For thetownspeople the bridge is as vital a part of life as the sun, while it isthe raison d'etre of the town itself, which has grown up around thebridge "as from its root". The importance of the bridge on the Drinais further highlighted by the fact that there is another bridge inVisegrad - over the Rzav, a small river which joins the Drina at theedge of the town. But any mention of "the bridge" always means thecarved stone bridge over the Drina and never the simple wooden oneover the Rzav, "without beauty, without history, with no othermeaning than that it serves the locals and their livestock as acrossing-point".7 From the beginning, therefore, we are given someidea of the importance of the bridge on the Drina in the life of thetown, and in the course of the chronicle we gradually discover whatexactly its "meaning" is.

The role of the bridge in the townspeople's mentality, as Andricdescribes it, typifies the way in which his characters in generalexperience their lives. The symbols Andric uses to convey their

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essential experience grow out of that experience, and are notimposed on it from outside. This can perhaps be most clearly seen inThe Bridge on the Drina where the bridge is experienced as a symbol,even though its significance is never articulated. The townspeoplewould always give a more rational account of its importance. In thisway we can say that the symbolic level of Andric's writing does notin fact lie "under" the surface of his characters' experience. It is anintegral but unspoken part of that experience.

Every important moment in an individual life is in some wayconnected with the bridge. The Christian children born on the leftbank of the river cross it in the first days of their life to be baptized;and all children, Moslem and Christian, spend the majority of theirchildhood around it. They know all the carefully carved forms of thebridge, and all the stories and legends associated with it. Thesechildren, for whom the legends are most alive - since they form apart of their games - contribute most to their preservation. Theyplay and fish under the bridge; with adolescence they move up on tothe bridge itself, and particularly on to its central part, where stonebenches and a coffee-maker encourage the townspeople of all ages tolinger. Wedding and funeral processions pass over the bridge andgenerally stop at the central point, where the wedding guestsfrequently dance the traditional round dance, the "kolo", while thecoffin-bearers lower their burden where their charge spent so muchof his life, to rest for a while.

The legends with which the townspeople grow up are described astales in which "imagination and reality, dream and waking, arestrangely and inextricably fused and interwoven".8 The townspeoplehave always known them "unconsciously, as though they hadbrought them with them into the world, just as prayers are knownand no one remembers from whom he learned them nor when heheard them for the first time".9

To convey the archetypal quality of these legends and theirtimelessness, Andric uses two themes from the traditional SouthSlav heroic ballads. One is simply the name of the builder reputed tohave built the bridge. "Rade Neimar" (Rade the Builder) is associ-ated with all the fine white palaces and towns mentioned in theballads. He is the archetype of "the builder" in the popularimagination. Frequently in the South Slav ballads, and in the


European tradition in general, building enterprises are beset bydifficulties created by a "spirit" which demands that a humansacrifice be built into the foundations before the building can becompleted unhampered. In the case of the bridge on the Drina thetraditional pattern is observed. The story goes that all that wasachieved during the day was destroyed at night, and somehow thebuilders came to feel that they must find newborn twins called by thetraditional names Stoja and Ostoja, and build them into the founda-tions before the building could continue. The Visegrad legenddescribes how two such children were found and built into thecentral pillars of the bridge, but Rade the Builder took pity on thedespairing mother and left openings through which she couldcontinue to feed her babies. This traditional outcome explains thetwo finely carved apertures on the bridge, now used as nesting-placesby doves, and the two thin white marks on the columns that seemlike milk trickling from the holes at certain times of year. So strongis the legend in the town that enterprising merchants scrape thewhite powder from the bridge and sell it as a remedy to nursingmothers with insufficient milk. This legend seems to have grown outof the notion that nature demands a price for human interference inthe name of progress, and that any human undertaking of realbeauty and significance requires a sacrifice of appropriate magni-tude. Andric explains the "real" events which made it possible forthis idea to be expressed in this particular form.

The immediate reaction of the population to every innovationintroduced into Visegrad is to reject it. This is true also of thebridge. The apparently senseless chaos of all the equipment requiredfor its building; the unjustifiable untidiness and inconvenience thiscauses; above all the tyrannical methods of the Turkish foreman whoforces the whole male population to work without pay - allcontribute to the resistance of the townspeople to the idea of thebridge and eventually drive a handful of men to sabotage. Since thenotion of human sacrifice in enterprises of this kind is widespread, itis easy enough for the saboteurs to spread the story of a hostile spiritand to supply proof in the form of the systematic destructionovernight of the work carried out during the day. And by a strangecoincidence their scheme is given credence by the fact that a simple-minded girl from a neighbouring village gives birth at about the

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same time to still-born twins. The babies are taken from herimmediately and buried, but for days she searches for them,wandering around the site of the bridge and asking the workmenwhether they have seen her children. The coincidence is so strange,and the sight of the unfortunate woman wandering distraught by thebridge, unable to understand the straightforward explanation of thevillagers, so captures the imagination of the townspeople thatalthough not many actually believe the story that the children werebuilt into the bridge, everyone repeats it and passes it on. The storysatisfies their real need to acknowledge the significance of thebuilding.

Another legend associated with the bridge survives similarlythrough the strength of the emotions it arouses, and particularlyamong the children through its ability to give shape to some of theirirrational fears. During the construction of the bridge an Arabworkman was crushed to death by falling rock and his body couldnever be completely extracted. Such an accident is an inevitable partof much human endeavour, which may itself account for thepersistence of the notion of human sacrifice associated with buildingventures of importance, since bones actually are found in the wallsand foundations. The horror of this accident stays in the popularconsciousness and the story is carried down among the children that"the Black Arab" lives in a large dark hole in the central part of thebridge. Any child who sees him will die. His figure haunts theirdreams and during the day the children taunt their fears and test theirnerve by approaching the Arab's cave, for the most part disbelieving,but unable to resist the powerful fascination of terror. The pattern oftheir behaviour is timeless, corresponding to a profound human need.Only the form of its expression alters from one culture to another.

Then there is the series of unexplained marks on each side of theriver beside the bridge, round and equally spaced, two by two, asthough they were the hoofprints of a giant horse. The children knowthem to be traces of distant heroic times, when the rock was still softand the warriors and their horses of enormous size. For the Christianchildren they are the hoofprints of the famous skewbald horse Sarac,belonging to Prince Marko, while for the Moslem children they arethose of the winged mare of their Alija-Derzelez. The children do notargue about their different interpretations, since each is quite


convinced of his or her own version, and no one has ever persuadedhis counterpart to change his mind. Their respective ideologies donot prevent the children from playing happily together, keeping thetiny fish they catch in the "hoofprint" hollows when they fill up withrain water.

Irregularities and strange features of the local landscape are thusgiven colourful explanations and woven into the sum of legend withwhich the local people grow up. The last feature of the bridge to begiven such shape is the mound above the road on the left bank of theriver. This is the grave of Radisav, the man who led the opposition tothe building and was impaled by the Turkish foreman. The details ofwhat he actually did and the way in which he was executed have longsince been forgotten by the townspeople, but once again his graveserves to satisfy the need of each community for heroes. TheChristians speak of him as a great hero of superhuman strength, whodefied the Turks over the building of the bridge, but who could notbe confined by any mere mortal bonds until he was betrayed andstrangled in his sleep with strands of silk, against which alone he hadno power. For the Moslems, again, it is the grave of a heroic dervish,who defended the crossing of the river against an infidel army anddid not want the grave marked in any way because he would riseagain to defend the river should the infidel ever try to cross it oncemore. Both communities believe that at certain times of the year astrange supernatural light can be seen over the grave, and bothbelieve in the second coming of their ideal hero.

Through these stories, Andric conveys the perennial human needto give scope to the imagination; to colour natural phenomena withsupernatural dimensions; to give shape to emotions of excitement,wonder, admiration and fear. "People remember and relate whatthey can grasp and what they succeed in turning into legend.Everything else passes them by without deeper trace, with the dumbindifference of nameless natural phenomena, not touching theirimagination or remaining in their memory."10

This whole introduction, with its emphasis on stability andharmony, reinforced regularly throughout the novel by reference tothe special properties of the bridge, acts as a counterweight to thetales of individual human destinies. The lives of the individualsdescribed are characterized often by violence, tragedy and a painful

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awareness of transience expressed in terms of a search for enduringmeaning beyond themselves. The contrasting broad perspective ofthe novel conveys a balance in which awareness of suffering ismatched by a positive acceptance of life. This is more than a passiveinstinct for survival. It is determined by the example of the silent,enduring triumph of the human spirit embodied in the bridge.

Andric describes the building of the bridge as the direct result ofone individual tragedy. As in the story "The Bridge on the Zepa", itwas commissioned from Istanbul by an Ottoman dignatory whooriginated from Bosnia. In Andric's account, which differs consider-ably from the facts, Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic was taken as a ten-year-old child, with other children from his neighbourhood, to servein the Janissary Corps as payment of the "head tax", part of theoppressive Ottoman taxation system. When the procession reachedthe banks of the Drina and crossed, by means of an unwieldy raft,the children's mothers and other relatives, who had followed at adistance, had finally to part from the boys. To the child who was tobecome Mehmed Pasha, this crossing-place on the Drina represen-ted defeat and impotence, a complex of emotions and ideas which henever fully articulated, but more or less rationalized in his later life:

Like a sense of physical discomfort somewhere within him - ablack line which from time to time, for a second or two, seared hisbreast in half - the child carried within him the memory of thisplace. There the road is severed, the hopelessness and tedium ofpoverty are concentrated on the rocky banks of the river, whosecrossing is difficult, costly and uncertain. It was a painful place inthat poor mountainous region where misfortune became publicand obvious, where a man was brought to a halt by the overpower-ing element and, ashamed at his impotence, was obliged torecognize and see clearly both his own and others' poverty andbackwardness.11

The "black line" of the river marked an absolute gulf between thetwo parts of the boys' lives. Because it was in addition a gulfseparating the Christian West from the Moslem East, it could standfor all the deep and apparently insurmountable divisions betweenmen, based on ideology and power.

With time Mehmed Pasha forgot the origin of his pain, but the


discomfort remained and drove him eventually to try to relieve it bybuilding a bridge across the gulf. This project was uniquely success-ful in that the bridge became a crucial link between Europe and theEast, fulfilling a clear need. More importantly, however, it stood forfuture generations as an example of the possibility of overcoming notonly physical obstacles, but also individual misfortune and transi-ence.

In addition to the expression of the townspeople's resistance tochange and the notion of sacrifice, after the details of the buildinghave been long forgotten there remains also the memory of theatmosphere surrounding the personalities involved in it. Peoplespeakt)f the ruthless foreman, his terrified and finally dementedsubordinate, and the heroic Radisav who led the resistance and wasput to a slow death for all the townspeople to see. The whole processof building the bridge is thus felt to have been carried out in an-atmosphere of fear. The initial reaction of the townspeople to thearrival of the workmen with all their equipment is one of alarm andconfusion in the face of the new, the inexplicable. Such anxiousapprehension will accompany the changes described later in thework, particularly such major developments as the introduction ofthe railway, but none of them is carried out by the terrorist methodsof a man like the original foreman. The memory of the building ofthe bridge also vividly illustrates the fact that fear breeds fear. Thesubordinate, Plevljak, is driven mad because he could have been theone to die slowly on the pale, had he failed to catch Radisav. Theforeman's own ruthlessness stems in part from the fact that he isconstantly aware of the possibility of losing his power because of thespies and informers who inevitably surround figures of authority.Such episodes are kept alive in the popular consciousness, because inthem an individual is seen to embody a significant aspect of thehuman condition.

It is Andric's intention that the positive qualities of the bridge,once it is built, should be seen completely to outweigh the sufferingentailed by its building and the individual tragedies played out on itover the generations. In order that the full significance of the bridgeshould emerge, Andric concentrates, in the body of the novel, onthese individual destinies. He describes in relentless detail the sceneof the impaling of the leader of the saboteurs. It is a passage which

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cannot easily be read and which Andric thought from time to time ofremoving or toning down. But he left it, and it serves as a remindernot only of the brutality of the Ottoman regime but of man's timelesscapacity for cruelty, inflicted particularly systematically as it wasduring the Second World War, when the novel was written.Radisav's fate is connected with the bridge only in so far as itsbuilding was the initial stimulus for his action. He representsqualities of resistance and courage, as timeless as the cruelty theyoppose.

The bridge sees its share of violence over the centuries. Duringthe nineteenth century in particular, and the rebellions which led tothe emergence of the independent kingdom of Serbia, the heads ofrebels impaled on the bridge became a common sight. The fate of ayoung Russian soldier who inadvertently allowed a Serbian rebel tocross the bridge, and his suicide, are recounted in detail. And thenovel ends with war. In the first days of the First World War thebridge is mined by the Austrians and the central section blown out.This violence to the bridge itself signifies the end of an age,symbolized in the death of one of the leading Moslem figures in thetown, Alihodza.

The experience of violence, and the fear of it, are the factors whichcompel people to find compensation in legend, in stories of noble,beautiful and strange characters and occurrences. Two such storiesare related.

The first is the tale of a Moslem girl, such a dramatic andexceptional tale that, as with floods and wars, the year in which ittook place is long afterwards remembered. The girl, Fata, wasexceptionally beautiful:

It has always been the case with us that one girl in each generationbecomes the subject of stories and songs through her beauty, herdiligence and nobility. For a few years she would be the object ofall desires and an unattainable model; imaginations would be firedby her name, rousing the enthusiasm of men and the envy ofwomen. These are exceptional beings whom nature sets aside andraises to dangerous heights.12

When a young Moslem announces in public that he will see her inhis home as his bride one day she categorically denies it, unaware


that her father is to promise her hand to that same young man. Shecannot make her father break his promise but neither can she goback on her word, so she goes through the marriage ceremony; butas the wedding procession makes its way across the bridge to her newhome, she stops her horse in the middle and leaps to her death in theriver below. "The townspeople related the event for some timeafterwards, and then began to forget. There remained only the songabout the girl whose beauty and wisdom made her shine aboveeverything, as though she were immortal."13 As with nurseryrhymes and many traditional songs whose originating circumstancesare forgotten but which remain, and continue to feed the imagina-tion of later generations, Fata's story is told for its own sake, withoutcomment. Like so many of Andric's stories, however, it implies acluster of ideas: the absolute power of authority; the common needto admire, to identify an individual as embodying exceptionalqualities; and at the same time pleasure at seeing such an individualhumiliated, the idea that such a degree of pride, admirable and pureas it is, should inevitably bring destruction on itself; the naturaljustice of uncompromising arrogance ending in such a dramatic anddefinitive leap. Above all it suggests the strength of an individualwill, refusing to be broken even to the point of death.

The other story tells the tale of a mysterious gambler and thedissipation of a man's entire fortune. On the morning after the gamea young Jewish boy finds a gold coin left on the bridge. It is theSabbath, but the boy defies the sacred laws of that day and picks itup, and with it he embarks on the life of a vagabond gambler. Thetownspeople predictably believe that the stranger responsible for thisdestruction of two lives was none other than the Devil.

Legends, and the tales of individuals and events which fire thepopular imagination, are the common stock the people of Visegradcarry with them through the generations. Such tales contribute totheir sense of identity and give the townspeople a coherence withwhich to face the vagaries of the natural elements and the upheavalsof history.

Natural disasters are an inevitable part of a community's commonheritage. In Visegrad the most frequent elemental force to becontended with is the River Drina. Flooding is a frequent hazardand thus marks the passing of time:

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. . . at irregular intervals of twenty or thirty years, there are badfloods which are afterwards remembered as are uprisings or warsand are long taken as the date according to which time, the age ofthe townspeople and the length of human life are measured.14

Such a disaster forms the focal point of a whole generation's life;those who experienced it will always be ready to talk about it atfamily gatherings or public festivals:

at a distance of fifteen or twenty years, in which the household wasrestored and began to prosper again, "the flood" came to be seenas something terrible and enormous, but familiar and cherished; itwas a close bond between the ever fewer survivors of thatgeneration, for nothing so binds people together as a shareddisaster, safely survived. And they felt themselves firmly linkedby the memory of that past misfortune.15

The parallels with the bonds formed in time of war and othercrises in any culture are clear. The young people, of course, cannotunderstand what comfort and pleasure their elders can possibly findin the memory of the worst setback of their lives. During suchnatural disasters the leading men of the town gather together in onehouse, and here there is no discrimination of faith: "The force of theelements and the burden of common misfortune had brought allthese people together and bridged, at least for the evening, the abysswhich divided one faith from another, and particularly the Rayahfrom the Turks."16 A unique atmosphere is created as these men sitover coffee and brandy, waiting for the night to pass and the water tosubside. To avoid speaking of the current disaster, they turn theconversation to other areas of their common experience: memories ofold times, stories of the town's eccentrics and notable events fromthe distant past. So their common heritage helps them to feel unitedin the face of a real threat, conscious of the endurance of the townand its life, despite all upheavals. When the water subsides and theyset about repairing the damage, they gradually come to realize theimportance of the bridge, which is always untouched by the ravagesof the flood: "Everyone knew that in that life of theirs there wassomething which resisted all the elements and which through theincomprehensible harmony of its forms, and the invisible wise


strength of its foundations, emerged from every trial indestructibleand unchanged."17 In times of crisis, the people themselves are ableto express timeless qualities of humanity which the arbitrary divi-sions of religion and culture otherwise obscure or distort. Thereaction of the townspeople to natural disasters is similar to theirbehaviour in the face of the man-made conflicts of the nineteenthcentury, and the Balkan Wars in the early twentieth century. Thereis the major difference, however, that it is impossible for therepresentatives of different faiths to mix freely while the conflictlasts. Each community then draws together for comfort and mutualsupport in the greater security of its own kind.

While the immutability of the bridge is continually stressed, theway of life of the townspeople is altered by external events. This factbecomes increasingly clear with the rapid changes brought by theend of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the staticyears of Ottoman rule there were few modifications to the life ofVisegrad. The most radical was the building of the bridge itself andthe increased importance it gave the town as a vital communicationslink. The next noticeable change came with the waning of Ottomanpower, during the nineteenth century. The boundary betweenBosnia and Serbia became more firmly established as Serbia acquiredincreasing independence, taking on all the characteristics of a statefrontier. This fact necessarily affected trade, traffic and the generalmood and mutual relations between Moslems and Serbs, subtlyaltering the long-standing relationship of occupier and occupied.

The first hint of change on such a scale that it marks the end of anera comes with the arrival of the Austrian army in Visegrad at theend of the nineteenth century. The extent of the change is realizedby the Moslem shopkeeper Alihodza, who serves as a symbol of theold Ottoman order. Alihodza refuses to take part in the futileresistance to the Austrian army, and as a punishment is nailed by theear to the centre of the bridge as the army approaches. He is thusobliged to experience the moment with exceptional force. As hereads the declaration which the Austrians stick to the wall of thebridge, it is suddenly clear

that it was all over with him, with all his family and all that wastheirs, over at once and for ever, but in a strange way: your eyes

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still see, your lips speak, you go on living, but life, real life hasgone . . . He goes slowly from the bridge and feels that he willnever again cross to the other bank, that this bridge which is thepride of the town and from the beginning closely connected withhis family, the bridge on which he has grown up and beside whichhe has spent his whole life, this bridge has been suddenly brokenin the middle . . . that broad sheet of white paper inscribed withthe Austrian declaration had cut it in half, like a silent explosion.18

On this level historical events do not only affect the lives ofindividuals, they virtually become their lives. It is possible forAlihodza to feel that his life has ended simply because an epoch ofhuman history has ended. History demands the complete commit-ment of the individual, and there is no limit to the way in which theindividual will be willingly manipulated by its requirements.

The immediate changes brought by the Austrian administrationare obvious enough to everyone in Visegrad. New buildings are putup, trees are cut down for new roads to be made, drains areconstructed, street lighting introduced. These innovations are grad-ually accepted by the majority of the population, although there arealways those who refuse. The identity of such people is thenexpressed entirely in their resistance. They represent the assertion ofa human dignity which has accepted one set of standards but will notnow submit arbitrarily to new ones. The older people in general,accustomed as they are to absolute stability in their way of life, areunable to understand the perpetual activity of the foreigners. Tothem it seems that the Austrians are merely playing with all theirweighing and measuring. Alihodza, who has accepted none of thechanges, feels that the Austrian frenzy is not only unhealthy but alsoevil - here the basic conflict between a static community and a"progressive" outsider is intensified by the conflict between Easternand Western cultures. Alihodza quotes religious authorities to showthat it is wrong to divert the course of running water for howevershort a time, as was necessitated by the repairs to the bridge. And forthe bridge itself, he gives an account of the origin of bridges to provethat the foreigners' meddling with it will lead only to its destruction:

My late father once heard from Sheikh Dedija and told me as achild the story of how there came to be bridges in this world and


how the first bridge came into being. When Allah made thisworld, the earth was flat and smooth as the finest engraved copperplatter. That did not suit the Devil, who envied man this divinegift. And while the earth was still as it had emerged from the handof the Lord, wet and soft as unbaked dough, he crept up andscratched the face of God's earth with his nails as hard and asdeeply as he could. That is how, so the story says, there came to bethe deep rivers and ravines which divide one area from anotherand separate people from each other and prevent them fromtravelling over the earth which God gave them as a garden for theirfood and sustenance. Allah was sorry when he saw what the EvilOne was doing, but as he was unable to go back to the work thatthe Devil had desecrated with his touch, he sent his angels to helpmankind. When the angels saw that the poor people could notcross those gorges and depths, nor complete their work, but thatthey were troubled and looked and called in vain from one side tothe other, they spread their wings over those places and peoplebegan to cross over their wings. So people learned from God'sangels how to build bridges. And that is why, after fountains, thegreatest good is to build bridges, and the greatest sin is to meddlewith them, for every bridge, from the log over the mountainstream to this work of Mehmed Pasha's, has its own angel whichprotects and watches over it, as long as God has granted that itshould stand.19

The majority of the population, however, after their initialreluctance, gradually accept the changes, as for them life is moreimportant and urgent than the forms in which it is lived. And forsome time it is only the external forms which change. Within theirhomes the people continue to live as they have always done, cookingand washing as they always did, celebrating their holy days andpreserving all their old customs: "Old beliefs and values conflictedwith new ones, merged with them or endured alongside them, asthough waiting to see which would survive."20 Eventually the newvalues, new tastes and fashions do penetrate further into the way oflife of the people. Particularly in peacetime cultural differencesbecome less marked and the foreigners begin to take on localcharacteristics, at first mainly through their children playing

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together but then in their own speech and habits, while the locals -particularly the Christians and Jews - adopt aspects of the foreign-ers' dress and behaviour. Nevertheless, from the broadest perspec-tive these changes are perceived as insignificant.

Despite the modifications to the traditional life of the town,despite the permanent lighting on the bridge and hitherto unknownpresence of women on it, the bridge itself is seen to be stillunchanged. As after floods and wars, it emerges from all theupheavals, just as it always was:

One could say that all these changes on the bridge were insigni-ficant, superficial and short-lived. The numerous and extensivechanges in the thinking and customs of the people and the externalappearance of the town seemed to have passed by the bridgewithout touching it. It seemed as though the ancient white bridge,which had lived through three centuries without trace or scar,would remain unchanged "under the new emperor" as well, that itwould resist this flood of innovations and changes just as it hadalways resisted the biggest inundations and had always arisen outof the seething mass of turbulent water that covered it, untouchedand white, as though reborn.21

The last chapters of the chronicle describe the first years of thetwentieth century in detail, with particular attention to the optimismof the generation who were students at the outbreak of the FirstWorld War - the generation to which Andric himself belonged.

These chapters describe lives in progress and the characters'hopes, plans and fears. They cannot have the completeness andsense of perspective of the earlier passages. On the contrary, theyopen the novel out towards an unknown future. Nevertheless, thelives of these young people are intricately linked to their town and itspast, through common memories and because they are the descen-dants of people who played out their role in the town in earlier times.The continuity symbolized by the bridge is therefore also embodiedin them. They are at once seen to live in history as they live in timeand space, and at the same time to carry history in themselves.

The Bridge on the Drina can be seen as a portrait of history itself.History is made as much by individual personalities as by massmovements and the upheavals created by the rise and fall of empires.


In The Bridge on the Drina there is a constant balance between theimpact of external events, of natural vicissitudes, and the particularflavour imparted by individual personalities who capture the imagi-nation of the local people and determine the temper of an age.

The stories of the drowned girl, the gambler and the Russiansoldier stay in the memory of the townspeople. Other individualsplay their part, not through any particularly memorable anecdoteslike these but simply through the force of their personalities whichattract wide attention in the town: such are Alihodza, the innkeeperLotika and the gypsy Corkan. Such characters impose themselves ontheir age and contribute to its history, to a lesser degree, but in thesame way as natural phenomena and man-made upheavals.

In the last chapters of the chronicle, where the passage of time isslower and Andric's focal point different, he no longer identifies theindividuals or crises that determine the history of the town. Theycan be selected only by future generations and their significance feltonly with the passing of time. Similarly, the "meaning" of the bridgecan be seen only in the broader time-scale where generations comeand go, facing the vagaries of fortune and carrying with them theircommon heritage, their sense of identity. The Bridge on the Drina isabout the passing of time, the presence in the world of individualhuman beings for a brief moment, filled for them with drama andurgency but forgotten except in rare instances, and then only ingreatly modified form, by the generations which replace them. In thechronicle the changes that come are neutral. It is only to individualsthat they seem either "good" or "bad". In themselves they are onlydifferent, requiring that infinitely adaptable humanity eventuallyaccept them. On this broad scale the people are not allowed theluxury of an apparent meaning to their lives through heroic action,love or dedication to any ideal. These are attributed to them, wherethey exist, only by later generations. Their lives simply pass. Theoverwhelming impression left by the work is not, however, thisbleak statement but a silent acceptance of the fact that, while livespass, life continues. The flow of life continues, carried forward byeach generation, unchanged by natural or man-made upheavals,unaffected by the destinies of individuals. And that is the signi-ficance of the expressive symbol of the bridge, communicated to thepopulation of Visegrad without the need for more explicit statement.

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The bridge represents a special harmony between man andNature. The importance of buildings, conditioned as they are byhuman need, is frequently stated in the work - the need can betransient and the result ugly, as in the case of the military observa-tion post erected on the bridge; or it can represent a long-termadjustment of man to his environment. If the result is not a taming ofNature but a meaningful response to man's surroundings, as in thecase of the bridge, it can be beautiful, a source of peace andharmony:

The strange and exceptional beauty of the bridge can never bebetter felt than on these summer days, at this hour. Sitting here, aman feels that he is on a magic swing: he is crossing the earth,sailing on the water, flying through space and yet firmly andsecurely fixed to the town and his white house over there, with itsgarden and its plum orchard round it. Here at such times, overcoffee and tobacco, many of these humble citizens, who have littleelse but that house and a little shop in town, feel the full richnessof the world and the boundlessness of God's gifts. All this can beoffered to people, and offered over the centuries, by a building,when it is fine and strong, conceived at the right moment, erectedin the right place, and successfully realized.22

The idea of a bridge is rich in association and open to wideinterpretation. Alihodza's account of its origin illustrates thestrength of the symbol on an unspoken level. To the townspeople intheir daily lives, however, it stands above all for permanence.

The permanence of the bridge in the face of change is a source ofcomfort to the people who live near it, just as the stability ofmountains and the constant renewal of the seasons have always been.It acts as an enduring counterweight to all the changes and upheavalsand the divisions between communities, so that a sense of balanceand harmony is always restored. There is an explicit statement of itsinfluence at the end of the chapter describing the floods:

So on the bridge, between the sky, the river and the mountains,generation after generation learned not to regret inordinately allthat the turbulent water carried away. Here they absorbed theunconscious philosophy to the town: that life is an incomprehensi-


ble wonder, for it spends itself and runs out perpetually, and yet itendures and stands firm "like the bridge on the Drina".23

It is characteristic of Andric that such a statement should not beplaced at the end of the novel. The belief it describes is unconscious,a point of reference which does not itself alter the basic facts of anindividual's life and mortality. The last words of the novel return usfrom the metaphysical to man and the earth: "On the slope leadingto Mejdan lay Alihodza breathing his last short painful breaths".24

Bosnian Story

From the broad time-scale of The Bridge on the Drina Andric movesin this novel to close consideration of a brief period of Bosnianhistory, known as "the age of the consuls". Andric began work onthis, his first novel, in 1924, seeing it as a study of contacts betweenEast and West. In the course of his diplomatic career, he was able tostudy documents concerned with the period, the reports of theFrench and Austrian consuls, and the published works of the maincharacters Daville (Davide) and des Fosses.25

After Napoleon's occupation of the Dalmatian coast in 1806 aconsul was sent to represent French interests in Travnik, theadministrative centre of Bosnia. The Austrian government rapidlyfollowed suit. Bosnian Story opens and closes with the reaction of thelocal Moslems to the idea of the coming of the Western consuls, andto their departure seven years later. The body of the work studiesthese seven years in detail. They are traced mainly through the eyesof the French consul, Daville, and his young colleague, des Fosses.The other main characters are the two Ottoman viziers governingTravnik during the period and the two Austrian consuls, vonMitterer and his successor von Paulich. The work is very carefullydocumented, often quoting the actual reports and journals of the twoFrenchmen.

While there is a certain progression in the response of the twoFrenchmen to their surroundings, the development of the novel istypical of Andric's work in that it is linear. There is no action that isdependent on interaction between the characters, and no relation-ships develop in any depth. Instead, individual events, characters or

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anecdotes become the focal point of each chapter. This structureconforms to the basic pattern of Andric's writing, but as in The Bridgeon the Drina the individual chapters are connected; underlyingthemes, developed in the separate chapters, contribute to thedominant tone of each novel.

While The Bridge on the Drina emphasizes the coherence andharmony of the life of Visegrad, the common experience that boundthe mixed community together, in Bosnian Story what is stressed is thehostility between the various groups living in Travnik. All the variouscomponents of the novel reinforce ideas of mistrust, misunderstan-ding, isolation and exile.

The novel opens with a prologue, describing the reactions of thelocal Beys to the news of the coming of the French consul. Theimmediate response of the man to whom the news is first given is thebald statement that they do not want any visitors. Such an attitude iscommon to both the Moslem and Christian communities in Travnik.Each group fears any new arrivals or changes to the established way oflife. As far as the native Moslem population is concerned - andparticularly the Beys, with their status and property - even visitorsfrom Istanbul are unwelcome as representatives of arbitrary and oftentyrannical rule, while Westerners pose the possibility of change on avertiginous scale. For the Christian population the situation is bad butfamiliar; they have adapted to the requirements of their meagreexistence as far as possible and they are sceptical and apprehensive ofany change. This general attitude is reflected in the state of the roadsin and around Travnik. Their poor quality is one of the aspects ofBosnian life that Daville takes as a sign of the backwardness of thepopulation. For him good roads mean, simply, progress and prosper-ity, and their neglect is another example of the innate malevolencewhich he sees as characterizing all his observations of Bosnian life.Daville's young colleague des Fosses, who is always more open-minded and receptive in his approach to the circumstances in whichhe finds himself, as usual makes an effort to understand the localpeople's attitude. He realizes that the bad roads are welcomed by theChristians, who even actively destroy them, as they put a barrierbetween themselves and Turkish visitors. For the Turks every linkwith Christian countries means opening the door to enemy influence,and consequently represents a threat to Turkish power.


There is an immediate contrast with The Bridge on the Drina here.The bridge is a symbol of contact and communication between men,regardless of ideology, while the bad roads of Travnik suggestdefensiveness and aloofness, a narrow self-absorption and mutualdistrust. These ideas are expressed in the description of the sur-roundings of Travnik, a description which is as arbitrary as that ofthe situation of Visegrad. On the surface, "realistic" level of thenarration the implication is that human responses are often at least inpart determined by natural circumstances and forces beyond theindividual's control. More importantly, for the author it is one of aseries of devices designed to evoke a particular atmosphere. The wayAndric has chosen to describe the position of Travnik contributes tothe dominant themes of hostility and isolation. The steep hillsdescending to the narrow river make it impossible for any roadsthrough the town to be straight, and consequently for movement tobe "easy and carefree". The inhabitants are restrained and cautious;they never laugh aloud, they speak little, but like to gossip undertheir breath.

The other aspect of this description, which offers a completecontrast to The Bridge on the Drina, is the emphasis on transience.The bridge in Visegrad stands for permanence, but Travnik isdescribed as "a fortified pass in which people have stayed to live forgood".26 The foreign visitors on whom the work is focused aresimply passing through, and this transience is reinforced at otherpoints in the novel.

The population of Travnik, in its uniform opposition to the idea ofvisitors, is presented as a coherent entity. This is necessary in orderto emphasize the isolation of the outsiders. Little distinction is madein this respect between the Moslem and Christian communities.However, the reactions of the various communities to the particularissue of the coming of the consuls differ, and the population is shownto be far from a homogeneous group.

The Moslem population is mistrustful of anything coming fromabroad and ill-disposed to any innovation. Their mistrust of theFrench consul is expressed in open hostility. Daville remains aconspicuous outsider, a potential target should any violence erupt inthe town.

There are two instances of such spontaneous riots, and they

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suggest that these are not simply an expression of cultural andreligious hostility. The reaction of the Moslem community to theFrench consul is not substantially different from their sentimentstowards the Vizier himself. It is largely a "mob" response to therepresentatives of any authority. The way in which Andric describesthis process gives it an "organic" quality. He states that it isimpossible to perceive the logic of these blind, furious, regularlyfruitless risings, but that they do have a logic of their own just asthey have an unseen "technique", based on tradition and instinct.The impression conveyed is of a natural phenomenon, like theinexplicable gathering of storm clouds which suddenly clash withoutapparent reason and then again disperse, leaving the sky clear fordays or weeks before accumulating again according to some hiddenlogic of their own. This account of the riots as a recurrent communalmadness reduces their significance as a direct expression of hostilityto the consuls specifically; the foreigners become merely arbitrarybut conspicuous targets.

In the seven years of the consuls' stay in Travnik, they are neveraccepted. The epilogue describes the Beys again, assessing the "ageof the consuls". They greet the news of their departure as a kind ofvictory for, although they had to a certain extent become accustomedto their presence, nevertheless they are pleased to see the departureof these foreigners with their strange, different way of life and their"brazen meddling in Bosnian affairs".27

The French consul does succeed in becoming accepted throughhis family life. The whole community takes an interest in thepregnancies of Madame Daville and in the death of one of herchildren. All are favourably impressed by the Frenchwoman'squiet industry and the example offered by the consulate of har-monious family life. Cultural divisions cease at this basic humanlevel.

The population of Travnik is, then, shown on the one hand toreact spontaneously as a coherent entity in certain circumstances,but on the other to be made up of clearly differentiated cultural andreligious groups, each with its own characteristics. In Andric'sworks the inhabitants of Bosnian towns regularly have this dualquality, with the emphasis generally falling on differentiation. Eachgroup has a specific role in the life of the town, with the gypsies


forming the bottom layer of the stratification - with all the mostdistasteful tasks left to them.

Travnik's population is made up of different groups, but it is tothe town as a whole that the European visitors react, classing thepopulation all together as "Oriental".

The main spokesmen of the Western reaction are Daville himself,who is consistently negative in his attitude to the conditions aroundhim, and des Fosses, who, by contrast, is ready to look further andwith greater understanding. In this way, the Western response isseen to be relative and conditioned by the nature of the observerhimself. Daville is presented as a weak, indecisive personality who isbound to react defensively to any situation which is difficult anddemanding. Des Fosses, on the other hand, is young, strong,imaginative and eager to learn as much as possible from hisexperience of Bosnia.

For a man of Daville's disposition, many aspects of the alien wayof life are "distasteful". His impression on leaving the Vizier's palaceis regularly a nauseating memory of the smell of mutton fatpervading the entire place, the clothes of its inhabitants and the veryfurniture and walls. He is similarly disturbed by the singing of one ofhis Moslem neighbours, who returns home each evening, usuallydrunk, singing the same mournful melody. The extent of Daville'sinability to enter into the spirit of this alien music, because of hisown personal dissatisfaction, is seen in a passage where he recordshis reaction to the singing in writing, instead of continuing with theepic poem on which he works in his spare time. We are driven bythese circumstances not to take his analysis seriously, but to see it asan expression of frustration with himself and his own poeticpretensions: "I have listened to these people singing and seen thatthey bring to their songs that same barbarity and unhealthy rage thatcolours all the other functions of their minds and bodies."28 Davillediscusses this music with his Austrian counterpart, who also dismis-ses it as "ein urjammer",29 but does not feel threatened by it. VonMitterer is a military man who, in spite of family troubles, is self-contained and not emotionally affected by his alien surroundings.

The reactions of the Westerners to "Oriental" phenomena are,then, to some degree conditioned by their own personalities. Thereare also vivid moments when the cultural gap between West and East

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is seen to be more objective. Daville succeeds in establishing adegree of sympathetic contact with the Vizier Mehmed Pasha,largely thanks to the latter's dignity and his personal admiration ofNapoleon. But the degree of contact possible between them islimited. On one occasion the Vizier, who takes great interest inDaville's account of life in France, asks him to tell him about theFrench theatre, of which he has heard so much. Daville, who isinterested in literature, is delighted and decides to read some scenesfrom Racine's Bajazet, on the mistaken assumption that the Turkwill enjoy the familiar subject matter. The Vizier's inevitablereaction, however, is to dismiss the scene described as out of thequestion in Turkish terms: "Why, he doesn't know what he's talkingabout, since the beginning of time it simply could never happen thata Grand Vizier should burst into the Harem and talk with theSultan's wives!"30 and to laugh long and heartily, making no attemptto disguise his disappointment, despite all Daville's endeavours toexplain the art and function of tragic drama in France. The otherstriking example of the cultural gulf is the scene in which bothconsuls are summoned to the Vizier's palace to share his triumph inhis recent victory over the rebellion among the neighbouring Serbs.The highlight of the audience is the moment when sacks of wartrophies are brought in and scattered on to rugs for the foreigners toadmire. Among the predictable weapons and armour, to the consuls'consternation, are piles of noses and ears cut from the defeatedrebels, and presented triumphantly in a hideous mass of preservingsalt and dried blood. This experience of something so very far fromthe criteria of Western civilization brings the two consuls closertogether, but causes Daville to doubt the whole purpose of hissojourn in Bosnia.

The theme of cultural differentiation is further developed byAndric himself in his function as narrator. In his account of Daville'sfirst ride through Travnik he suggests that "only Orientals arecapable of feeling and showing such hatred and contempt".31 Hemakes several incidental comments in the course of the narrative: forexample, on the degree of sincerity to be expected in the formalstatements of Turks. As Mehmed Pasha takes his leave of Daville heasks him to send his regards to the French general Marmont,speaking "with that distinctive warmth, which resembles sincerity as


one drop of water another and leaves a convincing, reassuringimpression on even the most sceptical interlocutor".32 And similarlywhen the second Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, leaves: "Daville well knewthat it was one of those Oriental lies or half-truths that circulateamong genuine relations and kindnesses like false coins among realones."33 There are also several brief asides, for example: "For anOriental, the Vizier was unusually lively, pleasant and open."34 Allthese incidental remarks contribute to the account of the Westernreaction to the ways of the East. Most of the experience of culturalconflict is that of the Westerners looking at the East from theoutside. Nowhere is the life of the ordinary local Moslem orChristian population described, except in the most general terms.Andric is concerned with the situation of people removed from theirfamiliar surroundings. The viziers are equally far from Istanbul asthe consuls from Paris and Vienna. On several occasions the viziersremark on their experience of Bosnia: "The climate is harsh, thepeople impossible. What can be expected of women and children,creatures whom God has not endowed with reason, in a countrywhere even the men are so immoderate and uncouth?".35 "IbrahimPasha could not find enough harsh words and grim images wheneverthey began to talk about Bosnia and the Bosnians, and Davillelistened to him now with genuine sympathy and real understan-ding."36

The Catholic monks also find conditions in Bosnia unusuallydifficult and the population of all faiths backward in all respects. Inan interesting conversation with des Fosses, the Franciscan monkBrother Julian puts this all down to Turkish rule, but des Fosses isnot satisfied - he feels that the Christians have also taken on certainOriental characteristics, such as "deceitfulness, stubbornness, dis-trust, mental laziness, fear of anything new or of all work, ormovement".37 He explains this as being the result of need, throughcenturies of unequal struggle and constant defence, which has nowbecome a habit and a great obstacle to all progress.

There is, then, a sufficient consensus in the novel, reinforced bythe narrator's interventions, about the difficult working conditionsin Bosnia for the reader to feel that there is some objective truth inthese statements, but the way in which the individuals choose toreact to the problems posed is of course more revealing of their own

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personalities than of the true nature of Bosnia. The most consistentlyhostile, as we have seen, is Daville, for whom nothing he experi-ences, from the strange sounds of Bairam when he first arrives to theend, has any charm. Early on he coins a formula to explain all thedifficulties of his situation and the life around him, which he makesno effort to understand: "Oriental poison". This "poison" is mani-fested in the unfriendliness, deviousness and backwardness of thepopulation, as well as in their singing. It seeps into everything,explaining des Fosses's perverse insistence on trying to understandand thereby excuse what is for Daville simply innate "malevolence".It affects the young Fresine, who tries to establish a commercialnetwork from Sarajevo and becomes disillusioned with the difficul-ties he encounters, and finally Daville feels that he himself hasbecome tainted by it.

From the first day "all his work and efforts in connection withBosnia and the Turks had dragged him down, hampered andweakened him. Year by year the effect of the 'Oriental poison',which dulls the eye and undermines the will, had grown in him andcorroded him".38 Even for des Fosses, who is fascinated by all he cansee and discover of Bosnia, the experience is difficult:

Like the tightening of an invisible hoop: everything required agreater effort and at the same time one became less capable ofmaking it; each step was more difficult, each decision slower andits execution uncertain, while behind it all lurked distrust, scarcityand trouble of all kinds. This was the East.39

The image of constraint is used of the whole historical situation ofBosnia in the early nineteenth century:

These clashes of such opposing interests, beliefs, aims and hopes,formed a tight knot which the long Turkish wars with Venice,Austria and Russia entangled and tied still tighter . . . [with] theuprising in Serbia . . . the knot tightened and became still more

4flintricate.

The image applies to intercultural relations in Travnik, butequally to the inner confusions of the characters themselves. For allthe foreigners, Bosnia represents a complex of problems to betackled. But their ability to tackle them depends on their own inner


resources. The young and energetic des Fosses cuts straight throughthe tangled knot. His personality is positive and outgoing; he does notresist the demands of the world. Another character, the Austrianconsul von Paulich, survives by treating the difficulties of his situationas a logical, formal game.

It is Daville above all who experiences Bosnia as a defeat.Objectively, his professional success is considerable and he isregarded by others as decisive and effective. To himself, however, heis inadequate and it is his perception of himself that corrodes andundermines his actions, rather than any qualities inherent in Bosnia.It is through the character of Daville that Andric suggests that exile -the theme which runs through the work - is also an inner state ofbeing.

Bosnia, then, represents a microcosm, where the obstacles confron-ting an individual anywhere are thrown more clearly and starkly intorelief against the bleak landscape and the extreme barriers tocommunication. Against this background, and inextricably inter-woven with it, the other main themes of the novel are developed.

The coming of the consuls is conditioned by historical events, as arethe duration of their stay and their relations with each other while theyare in Travnik. Always cool, these relations are ruptured completelywith the outbreak of war between France and Austria; re-establishedwith peace; only to be interrupted again. Such behaviour - inconditions which are so difficult for both men and where they couldhave so much common ground - is objectively absurd, but equallyclearly it is demanded by the conventions of international relations.

Not only is the behaviour of the consuls determined by events farfrom them: because of the heterogeneous nature of the localpopulation, relations between the various groups that compose it arelikewise dependent on distant events. Events in Istanbul aredescribed as having an immediate effect on the population of Travnik- as can be seen in their reaction to the replacement of Mehmed Pashafollowing the deposition of Selim, regarded as a triumph for forceshostile to Napoleon. With the news of Selim's murder in Istanbul, andthe subsequent killing of the man who led the revolt against him, themood of the population becomes so troubled that it is ready once moreto erupt in a riot, as soon as a scapegoat and immediate motive can befound.

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Like the consuls, the viziers are sent to Travnik as part of a chosencareer - beyond that they have no control over their destiny, and thelength of their stay depends on the fluctuations of power groups inthe Ottoman capital. Their situation is markedly worse than that ofthe European consuls in that the Ottoman system is so much moreviolent. Not only are the rulers responsible for their appointmentliable to be deposed and murdered, but their own fate following suchan event is likely at best to be exile to some distant outpost of theEmpire. Since we see the viziers solely in their professional capacityand never as family men (they leave their harems behind when theytake up their appointments), they are seen to be completely isolated.There are three viziers in Travnik in the course of the novel and theirlives are shaped entirely by events far from them. An air of intrigueand informing surrounds them. Their power rests entirely on anability to anticipate and avoid violent turns of fortune by being thefirst to take violent action.

Something of this intrigue surrounds the consuls' dealings witheach other, although on quite a different scale. Their positionrequires them wherever possible to make difficulties for each other -Daville manages to delay von Mitterer's arrival, with the co-opera-tion of local administrators in holding up his papers. Von Mitterer inhis turn works at exacerbating Daville's bad relations with theCatholic community. Each throughout the novel continues to takeevery opportunity of hampering the other's work, despite theirregular, if never warm, contact and despite the fact that, in thedifficult conditions in which they find themselves, each could offerthe other genuine sympathy and support:

Their unhappy fate and the difficulties it brought drove themtowards each other. And if ever there existed in the world two menwho could have understood, sympathized with and even helpedone another, it was these consuls who spent all their energy, theirdays and often their nights putting obstacles in each other's wayand making each other's life as troublesome as possible.41

Such a situation, conditioned by the rules of power politics, stuntsthe degree of communication possible between the consuls andbetween the consuls and the viziers. The viziers are indeed able tomake a degree of sympathetic contact with Daville only because of


the friendly disposition of the ruling sultan to Napoleon. Theirrelations with the Austrian consuls are correspondingly cold andformal.

When the situation between France and Austria improves the twoconsuls take advantage of the lull to communicate more freely andwarmly, but as tension increases once more between Napoleon andthe Habsburgs they mete out their comradeship in carefully mea-sured doses until a complete break between their governments, orthe outbreak of war, obliges them to interrupt their own contactcompletely. Andric describes their situation with a characteristicimage:

Then both tired men would start their battle again, imitating, liketwo obedient puppets on long strings, the movements of the greatdistant battle, whose long-term aims were unknown to them andwhose scale and intensity filled them both, in the depths of theirhearts, with similar feelings of fear and uncertainty.42

It is not only in his public relations, however, that an individual isaffected by historical events. The shape of a man's personal life andcareer is similarly conditioned by the times into which he is born.Once again, that process is most closely examined in the character ofDaville. His experience - the confusing upheavals of his formativeyears, when he was caught up at one moment in emotional enthu-siasm for Louis XVI and, ten years later, in a similar welcome for theRevolution, only to have to readjust to the idea of Napoleon asEmperor - provides a vivid illustration of the kind of forces whichmould a man's loyalties. Daville is shown to be particularly vulner-able, given his weak nature which always seeks absolute answersoutside himself, but the pressures on him are certainly intense:

In short, he was one of those people who are the special victims ofmajor historical events, for they are not capable either of with-standing those events, in the way exceptional and energeticindividuals do, nor of coming completely to terms with them, asthe masses of average people do.43

Historical circumstances also affect relations between individuals:when des Fosses arrives in Travnik he is twenty-four, and Daville is

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approaching forty. Such a gap need not be significant, but thediscrepancy between their experiences is such as to exaggerate thegap in their ages, indeed their generations, to the point where realcommunication is all but impossible. They are in fact as foreign toone another as any representatives of alien cultures. Des Fosses, whoprovides such a contrast to his countryman, had the good fortune tobe born later, under a stable regime. By the time of Napoleon'sdownfall the stability of his own robust personality is so wellestablished that he is able to take such a major reversal in his stride.For Daville, however, it means a renewed questioning of the wholeof his life and its meaning:

But it was difficult not to think, to remember, to see. He hadspent twenty-five years searching for "the middle way", whichwould bring solace, and give a person the dignity without whichhe cannot live. For twenty-five years he had moved, seeking andfinding, losing and gaining, from one "enthusiasm" to another,and now, exhausted, broken and worn down, he had reached thepoint he had started from when he was eighteen. In other words,all the roads had been only apparently leading somewhere; in factthey merely went round in a circle, like the deceptive labyrinths ofOriental tales; and so they had brought him, tired and faint-hearted, to this place, among these crumpled papers; to the pointwhere the circle starts again, like any other point in its circumfer-ence. In other words, there is no middle way; no true path leadingforward into stability, peace and dignity, but we all move in acircle, following always the same deceptive path, and only thepeople and the generations who follow it change, perpetuallydeceived. In other words, this was the conclusion of the wearyman's weary and fallacious thoughts, there are no paths at a l l . . .One only travels. The meaning and dignity of the journey existonly in so far as we are able to find them in ourselves. Neither pathnor purpose. One only travels. Travels, spends and exhaustsoneself.44

Bosnian Story concentrates on the relations of individual men in aspecific context. Relations between the consuls and their wivesprovide only incidental background information, and there are nosignificant friendships or other personal relationships in the work


which are important in their own right. The work is, then, focusedon a picture of a group of men working side by side in similarcircumstances, but without any real contact. We have seen some-thing of the way in which their relations are determined for the mostpart by forces outside their control. The other aspect of their lives tobe examined in some detail is the relationship, and generally thediscrepancy, between their public and private personalities. Thenecessity of presenting a public image which differs from the privateself is common, but exaggerated in a diplomatic career by the factthat the individual has to represent a government whose interests areat times at variance with his own. Daville and von Mitterer areunable to indulge in the natural sympathy each feels for the other;Daville is unable to make contact with the Catholic community; theAustrian consul is kept at a strict distance by the viziers. The consulsare obliged always to act according to the demands of their publicposition. Daville's main anxiety at difficult moments is how arepresentative of the great Napoleon should react. His indecisionalways humiliates and angers him. One of the extreme tests of thiskind occurs when Daville and von Mitterer are confronted with theTurkish war trophies. Daville is barely able to overcome his personalrevulsion but is spurred on by von Mitterer's strength of mind,determined not to be seen to be less zealous in his congratulationsthan his Austrian rival. When Daville and von Mitterer first meet,both endeavour gallantly to pronounce as naturally as possible thespeeches they have carefully prepared in advance:

Both consuls were completely filled with the dignity of theircalling and the initial zeal of the beginner. That prevented themfrom seeing the absurdity of the exalted solemnity of this meeting,but it did not prevent them from observing and assessing eachother.45

Towards the end of the meeting neither can quite stifle his naturalsympathy for the other's predicament. That same evening, however,they each write a report of their meeting for their superiors, in whicheach describes his conclusive verbal and moral victory over theother.

Thus the lives of these men have several dimensions: the publicencounters, their private reactions to them and their confidential

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accounts of them in which they go some way towards redeeming thehumiliation and indignity of the initial discrepancy. The followingpassage illustrates this predicament:

During the nights, when Travnik had already sunk deep into thedarkness, one could see only one or two lighted windows in eachof the two consulates. These were the two consuls, poring overtheir papers, reading information from their agents, writingreports. And then it would often happen that either Daville or vonMitterer, leaving his work for a moment, would go to the windowand stare out at the solitary light on the hill opposite, where hisneighbour and opponent was forging unknown traps and tricks,determined to undermine his colleague from across the Lasva andto spoil his plans.

The crowded little town between them had disappeared; theywere separated only by emptiness, silence and darkness. Theirwindows looked at each other, glistening, like the eyes of menfighting a duel. But, hidden behind the curtains, one or other ofthe consuls, or both at the same time, would be staring into thedarkness and into the pale beam of his opponent's light andthinking of him with emotion, profound understanding andgenuine sympathy. Then they would rouse themselves and returnto their work by their flickering candles and continue to writetheir reports, in which there was no trace of their feelings of amoment before and in which they attacked and debased eachother, from the false official height from which civil servants thinkthat they look down on the whole world when they are addressingtheir Minister in a confidential report, knowing that it will neverbe read by the people they refer to in it/6

It is when they are left alone in their studies with their papers thateach of the consuls can be most himself. Family life offers neither ofthem real communication. Madame Daville is completely absorbedin the efficient and harmonious running of her household, whileFrau von Mitterer is a capricious, hysterical woman, given toobsessive enthusiasm and disillusion - she can only hamper herhusband, upsetting his life and to a certain extent his career. So thetwo consuls are most relaxed when alone in their studies after therest of the household has retired. Des Fosses also writes when he is


alone in his room, but his writing of his Bosnian diary is a smoothextension of his daily explorations, which are always rewarding,rather than a compensation for his public frustration, as is the casewith the older men. Indeed, it is only when des Fosses is left alonethat he is really conscious of his own inevitable frustrations - those ofa vigorous young man unable to make contact with people aroundhim, and particularly with women. His predominant experience ofBosnia is of silence, an overwhelming silence manifested in allaspects of life, which he can ignore during the day, in his work, hisexcursions and conversations, but which oppresses him at night.

Von Mitterer, a professional soldier who thrives on order, iscontented only when sitting at night in his study, however cold,filling reams of paper with his orderly handwriting, describing thesurroundings of Travnik from a military point of view, with sketchesand statistics and other firm, useful facts. "By his candle, over thepages he had already filled, surrounded by silence, he felt alone, as ina secure fortress, sheltered and protected."47 Such a sense of securityis an illusion whereby the consul saves himself from all the absurdi-ties and difficulties of his position.

There are, then, three dimensions to the men's solitary writing: asense of relief at no longer having to pretend to be what they are notin order to satisfy the demands of their position; a deliberate salvingof their self-respect, shattered by the frustrations of the day inwriting - military reports for the one, epic verse for the other - butalso an unavoidable confrontation with their private being. Daville isoppressed by the discrepancy between his public and private life:

During the day . . . he was a calm and resolute man, with adefinite name, profession and rank, a clear goal and precise dutieswhich had brought him to this God-forsaken Turkish province, asthey might have taken him to any other part of the world. But atnight he was all he had once been, was now and was to be. Andthat man, lying in the darkness of the long February nights,seemed, even to himself, strange, complex and at times com-pletely unknown.48

The discrepancy between their public and private lives, and thefact that the individuals act as puppets, result in a strong sensethroughout Bosnian Story that a man's public life is a kind of game,

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with clearly defined rules. As long as he is absorbed in playing thatgame a man is prevented in some measure from realizing the extentof his solitude in a world where most human communication isgoverned and measured out according to these same rules.

That fundamental solitude is closely related to the whole idea ofexile which emerges as the dominant theme of the novel. Each of theforeign visitors is exiled in an alien culture to which he cannotsatisfactorily relate, in which he is condemned to solitude and forcedalways back on his own resources. There are, apart from the maincharacters, several other exiles: the Levantines, Christians in anEastern environment; and the archetypal exiles, the Jews.

From the first, Daville is made to feel uneasy by his "Levantine"interpreter, d'Avenant (known locally as Davna) - a man of mixedMediterranean background, who studied at Montpellier and Istan-bul and opted for French nationality, but spent all his working life asa doctor in Ottoman service. Daville's immediate dislike of himsprings from the sheer incongruity of his being a Westerner who hasfor ever linked his life with the East. The concept "Levantine" has aspecific meaning for the narrator:

The Levantine is a man without illusions or scruples, faceless, orrather with several masks, obliged to act condescension onemoment, courage the next, or despondency, followed by enthu-siasm. For these are nothing but the necessary weapons of hislife's struggle, which is harder and more complicated in theLevant than in any other part of the world. A foreigner, throwninto this unequal struggle, becomes completely submerged in itand loses his true identity. He spends his life in the East, but getsto know it only imperfectly and from only one side, from the pointof view of winning and losing in the struggle to which he iscondemned. Those foreigners who, like Davna, remain in theEast, in the majority of cases take from the Turks only the basersides of their character, and are incapable of observing andadopting any of their higher qualities and customs.49

There are three characters in the novel who are described asbelonging to this category, but they are isolated even from eachother. The two doctors, Davna and Cologna, are rivals: "But thebasis of their rivalry was not so much the books or the knowledge


that they had, as their Levantine need for quarrelling and competi-tion, their professional jealousy, Travnik boredom and personalvanity and intolerance."50

Cologna is the main spokesman for the Levantine position and, atthe same time, the focal point of a cluster of ideas about theencounter of East and West. His ideas are of particular importancein the novel:

"You don't need to explain anything to me; I understand theposition of the consuls, as I do that of every educated man fromthe West whose destiny drives him to these parts. For such a man,to live in Turkey means to walk on a knife-edge and to burn over alow flame. I know this, for we are born on that knife-edge; we liveand die on it, we grow and burn ourselves out in that fire . . .

No one knows what it means to be born and to live on the edgeof two worlds, to know and understand both and not to be able todo anything to explain them and bring them closer to each other,to love and to hate both of them, to hesitate and stumble all one'sdays, to have two homelands and none, to be everywhere at homeand to remain for ever a stranger; in short, to live stretched on therack, at once victim and torturer . . .

Yes, those are the torments suffered by Christians from theLevant, which you, who belong to the Christian West, can nevercompletely understand, and which the Turks can understand evenless. That is the fate of the Levantine, for he is the 'poussierehumaine', the dust of humanity, which shifts uncomfortablybetween East and West, belonging to neither and beaten by both.They are people who know many languages, but none is theirown, who know two faiths, but are steadfast in neither. They arethe victims of the fatal division of mankind into Christians andnon-Christians; eternal interpreters and go-betweens; but theycarry within themselves so much that is unclear and unspoken;well acquainted with both East and West, their customs andbeliefs, but equally despised and suspected by both . . . They arethe people from the frontier, spiritual and physical, from the blackand bloodstained line drawn after a great and absurd misunder-standing between people, God's creatures, between whom thereshould be no frontiers. It is that border between the sea and the

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land, condemned to eternal movement and unrest. It is the thirdworld in which all the malediction of the universe settled after thedivision of the world into two. It is . . ."

Des Fosses, enthralled, his eyes burning, watched the changedold man, who kept searching in vain for words, his arms stretchedout as on a cross, and who came suddenly to an abrupt end, sayingin a broken voice:

"It is heroism without glory, martyrdom without reward. Andyou at least, our fellow-believers and our kin, you people from theWest, Christians with the same blessing as ourselves, shouldunderstand us, accept us and ease our destiny."51

This speech develops two of the main themes of the novel, theextent of the division between East and West, and the absurdity ofthis arbitrary but insurmountable division. People are cut off fromone another by accident of time and birthplace. They are isolated bythe natural sympathies and antipathies of their personalities, andwhere their instincts could bring them together, they are divided bytheir public position or their religious allegiance. In the midst ofother human beings, all individuals are irrevocably "exiled".

The importance of this theme is reinforced by the figure of theJew, Salomon Atijas, who comes to Daville at the end, knowing thatthe consul's salary has not been paid for several months, to offer hima loan to cover the costs of his journey home. On this solemnoccasion, Atijas feels an overwhelming need to explain himself andhis people to the foreigner who is about to leave Travnik for ever,"For once to say something which would not be dictated by cautionand shrewdness, which would have nothing to do with acquiring andsaving, but would be an expression of generous pride andsincerity."52 In the event he is unable to say all he would like, butthe narrator provides an account of what he would have said, had hebeen able. He describes the history of the Sephardic Jews, how theywere swept away from their native Andalusia by a whirlwind whichscattered them over the earth:

It cast us here, into the East, and life in the East is for us neithereasy nor blessed, and the further a man goes and the closer hemoves towards the birthplace of the sun, the worse it is, for theearth is increasingly young and raw, and man is of the earth. And


our trouble lies in the fact that were unable either completely tocome to love this land to which we owe gratitude that it acceptedus and gave us refuge, or to come to hate the one which drove usunjustly out and persecuted us like unworthy sons. We do notknow whether it is harder to be here or not to be there . . . We lefta long time ago and we travelled with difficulty, stumblingconstantly, and we stopped in this place, and that is why we are nolonger even a shadow of what we were. Like the bloom from afruit that is passed from hand to hand, a man loses first what isfinest in him. That is why we are as we are.53

In this speech we have an example, unique in Bosnian Story, of asense of community. Elsewhere in the novel the individual hasalways been contrasted to the community to which he cannot fullybelong. And it is not necessary to be a foreigner to be an outsider.One of the several anecdotes des Fosses records about the inhabi-tants of Travnik describes the life of the singer Musa, whose dirge soupsets Daville - he is a social outcast, a nonconformist, and desFosses is made to quote from Marcus Aurelius in this connection:"He who avoids the responsibilities of the social order is the same asan exile." Musa, then, represents the outcast within society, whilethe Jews exemplify the outcast community opposed to an aliensociety and the Levantines individuals whose situation is similar tothat of the Jews but exacerbated, for they have neither community hitheir exile nor homeland, however distant.

All these varying degrees of isolation contribute to the bleaktexture of Bosnian Story, dominated as it is by the silence firstcommented on by des Fosses. Silence because there is no realcommunication between cultural groups, or between individuals,and ultimately, in the case of Atijas, because of the sheer weight ofwhat he has to say. The silence of this sombre landscape is brokentwice, by the Catholic monk Brother Luka, and by the LevantineCologna. Both men are doctors, both close to the fundamentalmovements of life:

Watching from day to day, from year to year, the plants, minerals,and living creatures around him and their changes and move-ments, Brother Luka had discovered increasingly clearly that inthe world as we see it there exist only two things, growth and

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decay, and that they are closely and inextricably connected,eternally and everywhere in movement. All the phenomenaaround us are only separate phases of that endless, complex andeternal ebb and flow, only fictions, transient instants which wearbitrarily separate, identify and name with fixed names, such ashealth, sickness and dying. And none of this, of course, exists.Only growth and decay exist in various stages and various forms.The whole skill of the doctor lies in recognizing, capturing andexploiting the forces moving in the direction of growth, "like asailor the winds", and in avoiding and removing all those whichserve decay. Where a man succeeds in capturing that force, herecovers and sails on; where he does not succeed, he sinks simplyand irresistibly . . ,54

Brother Luka has all his life been filled with enthusiasm for hisvision of the world and the perfect harmony which can only beguessed at, which man succeeds at times in using, but is never ableto control. Cologna, who belongs nowhere and has no publicfunction which could offer him illusory security and an objectiveidentity, balances the preoccupations of the "public men". He is athome in conversation with Moslem, Catholic, Orthodox and Jewand free to move among them all. His face is described as asuccession of masks; he changes language as easily as his expressionand does not even have a name which would be fixed and perma-nent. He embodies in one being the ebb and flow described byBrother Luka, a constant succession of shifting moods. His charac-ter is summed up in the formula "consistent instability". It comesas no shock, then, that this basically sceptical philosopher, for allhis occasional attacks of Catholic piety, should declare himself aconvert to Islam in order to avoid death at the hands of a mob. Inhis case there is no serious dishonour: from his perspective allbeliefs are relative and, in his detachment from the world, he offersan expression of the great that constancy and the one real hope.

Cologna's declaration of his fundamental belief, the statement ofan intellectual rather than a profoundly religious mind, comes atthe end of his description of the isolation of the Levantine, and actsas an antidote to the emphasis on isolation which colours the wholenovel:


At the end, at the real final end, everything is good and everythingis resolved harmoniously. Although here everything really doeslook discordant and hopelessly entangled. "Unjour tout sera bien,voila noire esperance", as your philosopher put it. And one cannoteven imagine it any other way. For why should my thought, goodand true, be worth less than the same thought conceived in Romeor Paris? Because it was born in this backwater called Travnik?And is it possible that this thought should not be recorded in anyway and nowhere written down? No, it is not. Despite theapparent fragmentation and disorder, everything is connected andharmonious. No single human thought or effort of the spirit islost. We are all on the right path and we shall be surprised whenwe meet. But we shall all meet and understand one another, nomatter where we go and however much we lose our way. It will bea joyful vision, a glorious and redeeming surprise.55

This message represents a kind of revolt in the whole starklandscape of the novel. Andric deliberately uses the Levantine toexpress the message, for he is the character uniquely shaped by Eastand West, and yet belonging to neither. It is an expression ofAndric's own philosophy, the philosophy which permeates his work- a blend of the daily experiences of his early years, Orientalacceptance of life in all its forms, with his experience of Christianityand knowledge of the development of Western thought.

From his very different perspective, Daville is ultimately drivenon by a similar belief. Aware that he himself will never find the"right path" for which he has searched all his life, he neverthelesspacks his belongings to leave Travnik soothed by the thought thatmaybe his children, or their children, will reach it.

The dominant idea of transience and exile is balanced here by theimage of the "right path". The essential experience of living is thusfelt to be dissatisfaction and restlessness, governed by a constantsearch for roots, for communication, for meaning.

The Woman from Sarajevo

In Bosnian Story we are given an account of the way in which severalindividuals react to the essential conditions of human existence, and

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of the extent to which each is able to find a way of accepting theseconditions. The broader perspective of The Bridge on the Drinaplaces individual lives in the arbitrary flux of history, emphasizingthat "meaning" can be found only outside them, in legend and asymbol of continuity such as the bridge.

The Woman from Sarajevo presents the portrait of an individualwho appears "mad" because she refuses to accept the basic condi-tions of existence. We have seen that other characters in Andric'sfiction react to their own fear and insecurity with hatred andaggression towards others. The protagonist of The Woman fromSarajevo directs her "unnatural" behaviour above all against herself.

Rajka Radakovic refuses to be cast adrift in an uncontrollable ebband flow, at the mercy of arbitrary forces. She attempts to do theimpossible by making of herself a bulwark against the tide of changeand decay, by forcing her vulnerable human flesh into a structure asinviolable as the bridge on the Drina.

This endeavour, expressed in obsessive miserliness, is difficultmaterial for the novelist. Andric's characters are, for the most part,seen to react - more or less robustly or aggressively - to circum-stances imposed on them by the nature of their existence. Rajka, onthe other hand, is herself responsible for her isolation and for all thehardship that is the result of her obsession with money. It is acomplex passion, as it acquires all the characteristics of an irrationalforce common to those of Andric's stories concerned with ungovern-able impulses of fear, guilt, power, and so on. Yet it is based on anddeveloped through a series of quite rational decisions and actions.This paradox is to an extent resolved by a study of Rajka'spsychology, but the texture of the novel is thinner than that of theother two works published at the same time. It suggests an"unnatural" task that the author has set himself, rather than materialevolved from his experience.

The Woman from Sarajevo begins with an introduction announcingthe death of Rajka Radakovic, as it is reported in the Belgradenewspapers. The first chapter then focuses gradually on her dilapi-dated house in Belgrade, her neighbours' impressions of her, herexternal appearance and details of her way of life. The body of thework is a lengthy reminiscence as Rajka looks back over her wholelife; it shifts back and forth from the past to the present and ends


with Rajka's sudden death from a heart attack as, in her anxietyabout the safety of her money and in the gloom of her unlit flat, shecomes upon the wet coat she had hung up in the hall and mistakes itfor the thief she had for so long feared.

In view of the work's concentration on the figure of Rajka, and thefact that the novel looks largely at the world as she sees andexperiences it, the role of the narrator is not altogether clear. Rajkadominates the narrative from beginning to end and the narrator'sown descriptive comments jar slightly, since he makes no attempt toattribute these observations to the main character herself. Theseexternal comments do set Rajka's story in a specific context andendeavour to link her life with her age and environment.

Sarajevo in the first decade of the twentieth century is described asabounding in contrasts and conflicting views and ways of life, variedsocial classes and groups, religions and nationalities, bound togetherin their common desire for money. The tone of the town is describedas the product of Oriental habits of idleness and a Slavonic need forexcess, combined now with Austrian formalistic concepts of societyand social obligations, basing a man's social standing on his ability tospend:

It is hard to imagine a town with less money and poorer sources ofincome but a greater thirst for wealth, with less will to work andskill in making money, but with more appetites and desires. Thecombination of Oriental customs and Central European civiliza-tion here creates a particular form of social life in which the localpeople compete with the new arrivals in creating new needs andopportunities for spending. The former habits of restraint amongthe poor and thrift among the wealthier classes had now paledutterly. In so far as there still were people who had preserved thetown's old ways of modest and strict principles of small earningsbut great thrift, they stood to one side of all social life, like thecomic remnants of times long past.56

In this context, Rajka's financial ventures flourish.As we have seen in the case of Travnik in Bosnian Story, the degree

of harmony between the various nationalities and faiths depends onthe stability of the whole society. A measure of hatred betweencultural groups is always latent, ready to be sparked by some upset

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in the established order. Such an upset in The Woman from Sarajevois the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand on 28 June 1914.It is only in the aftermath of such an event that the true nature of thepopulation of a town like Sarajevo can be seen. As in Bosnian Story,the impulse governing the outbreak of violence is treated as some-thing organic, irrational. Andric is speaking here of the lower strataof society whose dissatisfaction is always ready to be channelled inthe direction of violence, under any stimulus.

Adherents of the three main faiths, they hate each other, frombirth to death, senselessly and profoundly, carrying that hatredeven into the afterlife, which they imagine as glory and triumphfor themselves, and shame and defeat for their infidel neighbour.They are born, grow and die in this hatred, this truly physicalrevulsion for their neighbour of different faith, frequently theirwhole life passes without their having an opportunity to expresstheir hatred in its full force and horror; but whenever theestablished order of things is shaken by some important event,and reason and the law are suspended for a few hours or days, thenthis mob, or rather a section of it, finding at last an adequatemotive, overflows into the town, which is otherwise known for thepolished cordiality of its social life and its polite speech. Then allthis long-restrained hatred and hidden desire for destruction andviolence, which have governed their feelings and thoughts untilnow, break out on to the surface and, like a flame which has longsought and at last found fuel, these emotions take over the streetsand spit, bite, break until some force stronger than themselvessuppresses them or until they burn themselves out and tire of theirown fury. Then they retreat, like jackals, their tails between theirlegs, into people's souls, the houses, and streets, where theycontinue to exist for years, concealed, breaking out only inmalicious glances, foul language and obscene gestures.

This Sarajevo frenzy of hatred, nurtured for centuries by variousreligious institutions, favoured by climatic and social circum-stances and reinforced by historical developments, broke out nowand spilled into the streets of the modern part of the town, builtwith quite different assumptions, for quite a different order andquite a different kind of behaviour.57


The last general description of social movements is an account ofBelgrade society around 1920 - an unformed society, open to allcomers; an uneasy mixture of disparate people loosely linked bytheir common interests; people from various parts of the Balkansand Central Europe, uprooted by the War and assembled by chance,out of the context of the traditions and customs with which theygrew up. In such an environment fraud and deception are rife, sincestandards of behaviour are no longer clear-cut; a prevailing optimis-tic enthusiasm, after the misery of the War years, makes the path ofthe social climber and confidence trickster smoother than it would bein different historical circumstances. This general picture of Bel-grade society is used to describe the atmosphere of the gatheringsthat take place at the house of Rajka's relatives, where she and hermother stay on their arrival in Belgrade, and to explain thephenomenon of the trickster Ratko Ratkovic, who succeeds inpersuading Rajka to lend him money, something previously quiteunthinkable for her.

These more general statements about contemporary life includesome comments on the effect of the First World War on the ordinarypeople of Bosnia and the writing of young poets immediately after it- quoting directly one of Andric's first poems. All this backgroundmaterial serves to illustrate the circumstances in which Rajka's storytakes place and some of the social phenomena particularly associatedwith the period.

Rajka's own story, however, is not dependent on the historicalmoment except in so far as it determines the precise forms in whichher financial dealings develop. The story of her obsession is itselftimeless, but in Andric's work all aspects of life - the individual, themoment in time, the geographical and cultural setting - are inextric-ably linked.

Rajka is introduced at a stage when her obsession is fullydeveloped. Her house is dilapidated, with signs of neglect every-where, as though it were inhabited by somebody blind or totallyindifferent to worldly things, making use of them only whenessential. She is mending, and her delight in this activity is describedin lyrical terms. She has two sources of pleasure at this time -mending and saving. So absolutely is her world expressed in thesetwo verbs that she cannot bear even the concept of "spending" time

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on cooking and housework, since the very verb "to spend" in anyconnection or form is a source of pain for her. Her obsession withsaving shows an extraordinary degree of detachment from the world,to the extent that she is prepared to neglect her health and ruin hereyesight, sitting in the cold and dark. Health and eyesight costnothing and seem to come in abundant supply, unlike the things of theworld which wear out and decay. From her perspective her ownphysical being is infinite, or at least expendable in the cause of herideal. This ideal is described in terms of a young girl's indulgence inthoughts of love. As she might sing love songs over her work, so Rajkafinds herself repeating the magic words "mend", "forbear" under herbreath as she darns her already well-stitched stocking. The process ofmending is then exalted in heroic terms of struggle against a powerful,invisible enemy: "In this struggle there are dull, difficult, apparentlyhopeless moments, there are defeats and moments of weakness, butthere are, and many more of them, bright moments of dedicated,devout service and triumphant exaltation."58 The language of thislong passage and of the following one, a meditation on the notion of"forbearance", is such as might accompany an act of religious worshiprather than the homely task of darning, but for Rajka self-denial andsuffering for the sake of her ideal of thrift are akin to the zeal ofreligious devotion. These ideas emerge here from the fact that herdedication is to the abstract notion of preservation rather than to thephysical manifestation of her ideal - money itself.

The broad outline of Rajka's career is an initial obsession withacquiring wealth. The goal of her early life is the almost mysticalnotion of "the first million", a dream which fills her waking andsleeping life. She develops a ruthless business ability and succeedsrapidly in making large sums of money. She continues this activity allthrough the War years, exploiting every aspect of the War for her ownends, quite unable to understand the outrage of her fellow-country-men over this behaviour and their desire for revenge and retribution.When the War is over she is obliged to move to Belgrade, where noone knows her. Her activity here is more subdued, and she has lost herambition to acquire much more. Instead she concentrates her energieson preserving what she has and deriving satisfaction from speculatingas to what she might have made from various transactions.

The two main events in Rajka's life - her decision to embark on a


life of money-making, and her aberration over young Ratko Ratko-vic, which is so apparently out of keeping with her cold, solitarycharacter - are given a psychological explanation, which establishesan uneasy balance between the rational and irrational aspects of herbehaviour.

It is essential to Rajka's psychology that she be capable of greatdevotion. Two characters in her early life command her allegiance.These are her father and her mother's younger brother, a man somefour years older than Rajka herself, of exceptional charm and zest forlife. In her long reminiscence she reveals nothing of her earliestyears. Her real life began when she was fourteen and the father sheadmired suffered the ignominy of bankruptcy and died. Her fatherhad been the epitome of all that was strong and dignified, and sheregarded him almost with reverence. Consequently she takes hisdying message to heart: that her guiding principle through lifeshould be to save, that she should never be a victim of her ownweakness or the greed of others.

The solemnity of this moment stays with Rajka throughout herlife in Sarajevo, where she visits her father's grave each Sunday,forbidding her mother to accompany her. Her first reaction on eachvisit is a rush of tenderness unknown to her in any other circum-stances. But after this initial lack of restraint the tenderness turns tocold resentment of those who destroyed him, and she dedicatesherself anew to carrying out his last command as faithfully andliterally as she is able.

The grave is gradually forgotten as Rajka's vow becomes in-creasingly her own inspiration and, once she leaves Sarajevo, shescarcely thinks of her father. Her devotion becomes detached fromhis memory. She is incapable of any warmth of feeling towardsanyone else around her at any stage in her life, with the singleexception of Uncle Vlado, her mother's younger brother. Herresponse to Vlado is as unquestioning as her devotion to her father.He is a young man of great charm and an insatiable desire to give - ofhis strength, health and wealth. Rajka is drawn to him by over-whelming tenderness of an almost maternal nature, wanting desper-ately to save him from himself but obliged helplessly to watch hisinevitable downfall and death, penniless, of tuberculosis at the age oftwenty-two. He remains for Rajka throughout her life "her tenderest

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and most terrible memory, a perpetually unresolved question . . .The man who was dearest to her in the world had in unnaturaldegree that vice which was for her worse than any sin and blackerthan death. Profligacy!"59 Her readiness, after she has refused somany, to help young Ratko Ratkovic when he comes to her inBelgrade, appealing for assistance as he embarks on his businesscareer, stems from the single fact of his strong physical resemblanceto Uncle Vlado. Soothed by his gentle smile, so exactly like Vlado's,Rajka lends him increasingly large sums over a period of somemonths until she discovers that he is simply a weak-willed, self-indulgent squanderer. The shock of this discovery reminds Rajkaforcibly of that grave in Sarajevo, and as she stumbles home throughthe winter wind, she silently addresses her father:

I know and remember everything that you advised me and left meas a pledge, but what is the use if the world is such that in it liesand deception are more powerful than anything else? I dideverything to insure myself. But what is the good, when the attackcomes from where you least expect it? And if no one deceives us,we deceive ourselves. Forgive me for being so lost and helplessafter so many years and so much effort, but I did not betray myvow; the world betrayed me. You know how I worked, long andhard. I thought that your word, together with my will and effort,would be sufficient protection against everything. But it isn't likethat. In this world there is no protection nor adequate defence.60

After some days of illness, Rajka revives with one thought in hermind: to save. She can never recover her loss but she can preservewhat she has through her own effort and self-denial.

There is something of a vow of penance in this decision, and in theruthless way in which Rajka carries it out for the remaining decadeof her life. This is in keeping with the exalted tone we have alreadyseen as a feature of her obsession in its fully developed form. Andthis is the most interesting aspect of the novel. The psychologicalexplanation of Rajka's actions is not entirely satisfactory as it givesher irrational behaviour a rational origin, and because it is under-mined to a certain extent by the description of her habits ofeconomy, which verges on caricature.

The other aspect of the novel which interferes with our reading of


it as a psychological study lies in the writing. The tone is too variedto read quite smoothly. There are the passages of objective descrip-tion of the historical and cultural background of Rajka's activitiesand the neutral narrative itself; but the texture of the writing isrichest in the passages which reproduce the movements of Rajka'smind, such as the lyrical meditations on the joys of mending andforbearance mentioned above. The major part of the novel is writtenfrom Rajka's point of view. She is seen first carrying out her pledge,then reviewing the course of her conscious life. Where the narratortakes over there is a break in the tone of the writing, for what isdescribed is not seen by Rajka herself, or at least not in the sameterms. She is oblivious to everything that does not concern herselfand her narrow ambition. The discrepancy comes when the writerallows a certain measure of irony into passages seen through the eyesof his heroine. An example of this irony can be seen in the exaltedtone of much of Rajka's reflection and in individual passages, forexample the one in which she considers the concept of beauty:

She had never really understood why people made such a distinc-tion between what was beautiful and what was not, and what itwas that carried them away and intoxicated them to the extent thatfor the sake of what they called beauty they would waste theirhealth and spend their money, great, holy, powerful money,which was superior to everything else and with which no kind ofbeauty could be even closely compared.61

Or again, when she has delayed putting more coal on her meagrefire: "She was warmed by the shovel-full of coal she had not used."62

The devout nature of Rajka's fervour in her darning becomesexplicit when she describes the true meaning of the act: "To mendmeans to struggle against decay, it means to assist eternity."63 Andagain, of saving:

It supports life and the existence of things around us, enriches usconstantly and makes what we have eternal, so to speak; it saves usfrom spending, loss and disorder, from growing poor, from themisery that comes at the end and which is blacker and grimmerthan death, true hell, while one is still alive and still on earth. Andwhen one thinks that all of this around us is perpetually fading and

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vanishing, breaking, wearing out and slipping away, and howlittle and insignificant is all that we are capable of undertaking anddoing in the struggle against this process, then one would acceptany suffering and any renunciation, simply to resist this evil, thenone must be ashamed of every moment of rest, as a waste of time,and every mouthful as dissipation and luxury. One must endureeverything in this hopeless struggle, with the fanatical courage ofthe martyr.64

With each darned hole, Rajka is filled with a warm glow ofrealization that she has added one more positive mark to theuniversal account of gain and loss, "that another hidden crack in thegreat galleon of the universe has been sealed".65

Decay is relentless and loss inevitable, nevertheless it is impossibleto give up the struggle and submit meekly to destruction. Thestruggle is sufficient reward in itself.

Now she really could not see any more. But before she switchedon the light, she remained for a few moments, her hands crossedon her work, with the painful but exalted feeling that the ultimatelimits of saving were after all unattainable. This only saddenedher, but it did not discourage her. However far, even unattain-able, those limits were none the less more worthy of effort,renunciation and sacrifice than any other aim which a man couldset himself.66

All her life Rajka strives to cut herself off from the world, itsdemands and obligations, to concentrate fully on her goal. Politics,the War, demonstrations - none of this has any reality for her; it isintolerable for her to think that her life and affairs can be in any waydependent on such meaningless occurrences. For Rajka the realworld is somewhere else:

For a long time there had been two worlds for her, completelydifferent, if not completely separate. One was this world of ours,the one everyone calls the world, this whole noisy and immenseearth with its people and their life, their instincts, desires,thoughts and beliefs, with their eternal need for building anddestroying, with their incomprehensible game of mutual attrac-tion and repulsion. And the other one, the other one is the world


of money, the empire of acquisition and saving, known to only afew, the secret and silent, boundless area of wordless struggle andperpetual planning, in which calculation and measure reign liketwo dumb deities. Unheard and invisible, this other world is nosmaller and no less varied nor less rich than the first one. It alsohas its sun and constellations, its sunrises and eclipses, its risesand falls, its blessings and barrenness; it also has the great,obscure force of its inner meaning, of its life principle on whicheverything rests and around which everything moves and whichweak mortal man can only guess at and glimpse.67

Rajka's attitude to the temporal, chaotic world in which she isobliged to live her daily life resembles that of an ascetic, dedicatedentirely to the divine, moving among his fellow-human beings as oneenlightened among children. It is only after her mother's death inBelgrade that Rajka is able to live her life entirely as she wishes.While her mother's life was bleak enough, she had still managed toretain some vestiges of those small pleasures which brighten ordin-ary lives - a cat and some potted plants, for example. These - livingthings with their own demands - Rajka summarily removes andfeels at last quite free: "In the whole house there were no longer anyof those superfluous trivialities which distract and dissipate ourattention."68 Complete freedom comes only with complete solitude,the solitude demanded by any genuine great passion. And so Rajka isable to live out her life entirely in terms of her deity, "saving",through her solitary small triumphs of self-sacrifice, sitting in thehalf-light by a fire that hardly exudes any warmth, darning heroften-mended stocking although she can barely see.

For all the obvious irony of Andric's selection of his material andits treatment, there is a kind of misguided nobility in Rajka's single-mindedness. The initial impulse for her chosen way of life was, afterall, indignation against the world's destruction of her father. Such arefusal to allow the world and the process of decay to shape her life isa gesture which is dignified in its very futility. We have seen Rajkastate that the struggle itself is her reward, however unavoidable theultimate defeat. She rebels against senseless chance which threatensto upset her plans - the fact that this chance occurrence is theassassination of the Austrian Crown Prince and entails universal

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suffering on an appalling scale reinforces the ironic tone of the work,but her revolt is none the less noble in that it is doomed.

Rajka's harsh self-denial is, then, ultimately meaningless; but morethan this it springs from an initial fear in the face of decay and entailsdaily experience of that fear. In this way Rajka becomes a distortedsymbol of the human condition. She has deliberately refused anyendeavour to understand the workings of the world, other than thatone chosen rational world of finance. Consequently, she has no meansof interpreting the chaotic events around her, or of beginning tocomprehend that her self-interest during the War years would entailin its turn hatred and revenge. With the outbreak of war she is simplyafraid of the losses she will make, but when it ends she does not knowprecisely what to be afraid of, nor from which direction to expect anattack. The fear which then governs her life, and which is ultimatelythe cause of her death, is thus similar to the fear which affects the livesof so many of Andric's characters. In essence, her obsessive standagainst weakness and decay is not unlike the acceptable self-denial ofthe dervish Alidede, whose life is in its own way as "unnatural" asRajka's. Nevertheless, because her portrait entails the denial of somany basic human qualities, and because it is extended over thegreater length of a novel, such points of contact with other charactersin Andric's work become theoretical. The Woman from Sarajevoremains an exercise, which continues to puzzle critics.

Omer Pasha Latas69

No consideration of Omer Pasha Latas can be complete, since thenovel itself is incomplete; some chapters are fully worked out, butothers remain fragments. Sections of the work were published asseparate pieces in various periodicals between 1950 and 1973, whileothers remained in manuscript. They have now all been assembled ina coherent volume which follows the years of Omer Pasha Latas'scampaign in Bosnia. The novel can now be read in what is basically theform Andric had envisaged. The novel not only has a coherent outlinebut is coloured consistently by a set of ideas which reveal somefamiliar and some new aspects of Andric's thinking in his matureyears. Some of the pages of the completed sections are among thefinest of his works.


Andric wished to write a chronicle of Sarajevo, as he had done ofVisegrad and Travnik. The subject which presented itself to him wasnot the indigenous population of Sarajevo but, once again, a group ofoutsiders. This time the character who is the focal point of the workrepresents an irony that was the common fate of many converts toIslam, whether taken by force to make up the Janissary Corps - as inAndric's account of the story of Mehmed Pasha, the builder of thebridge on the Drina - or whether, like Omer Pasha, they left theirnative land voluntarily. Many of these men, in one way or another,found their way back to the place of their origin. Their situation ispotent in its associations of arbitrary exclusion from a static com-munity, constraint on action of all kinds, isolation and exile. Thesethemes were all woven into Bosnian Story, and it is inevitable fromthe similarity of the subject matter of the two novels that they shouldshare common features. Nevertheless, it is possible to see a generalprogression in Andric's interests between the two novels.

It is clear from some of the fragments scattered in periodicals,manuscript and in the pages of Signs by the Roadside that ideas forAndric's fictional works would come to the writer sometimes in theform of a bare sketch for a story, sometimes as a complete scene, andsometimes as a snatch of dialogue. These ideas can be of severalkinds: often they are presented visually, in vivid, more-or-less staticscenes which mark a crucial moment in the story or life of thecharacter described. Sometimes, again, they follow the whole spanof a character's history. Almost all of them, however, are imbuedwith strong emotional and psychological colouring. As we have seenfrom the earliest pieces, Andric's writings tend to cluster round afew essential emotional states; they do not work out a purelyintellectual ordering of experience, so that when we speak ofAndric's "ideas" we should always bear this tendency in mind.

We can see this process particularly clearly in the case of theunfinished novel. In its published form, it consists of a number ofchapters which build up a general impression of the arrival of OmerPasha's army in Sarajevo and its effect on the local population; anumber of chapters which examine Omer's household, his own storyand those of some of the figures around him; and three brieffragments centred on the reactions to his rule of the Austrian consulin Travnik at the time. All these pieces are connected with the

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historical figure of Omer and they are organized chronologicallyaround the years of his Bosnian campaign, 1850-52. This connectionis, however, fairly loose, and the extent to which they do form acoherent whole depends on the recurrent emotions and ideas thatgive the work its particular flavour.

Andric tends to examine events from the point of view of the effectthey have on the ordinary people who witness them. Here, as inBosnian Story, there is a clear division between the townspeople andtheir response to the presence of Omer's army, and the army itself:the townspeople form a unit, separate from the local landowners aswell as from the agents of Ottoman authority. In this case, thedivision of the local population into three faiths is not stressed; itsfunction is to provide a sense of stable continuity against which thevisitors will stand out as strangers in a hostile land. The familiartheme of isolation and exile is, then, one of the main components inthe atmosphere of the novel.

The basic form of Omer Pasha Latas, as well as this dominanttheme, is similar to that of Bosnian Story. The arrival of Omer's armyin Sarajevo is preceded by gossip, anticipation and apprehension.The pattern of arrival and departure against a static background wasmost fully developed in Bosnian Story. The opening chapter of OmerPasha Latas is complete. It was published in 1954 under the title"The Young Man In The Procession",70 and presents some of themain ideas of the novel.

The scene of the arrival of a stranger in a town where he is well-known by reputation, with all its inherent drama, has been exploitedby many writers and is also common in oral literature: it is one of the"set-pieces" of the South Slav tradition. This echo is clearlyprominent in Andric's mind in the first chapter.

Omer's task is unique. He has not come to quell a rebellion by the"rayah" or to defeat any external enemy, but to discipline the Beysand bring them into line with the new ideas of the Constantinoplegovernment for strengthening and preserving their decliningEmpire. The terms in which the townspeople have been summonedto greet the army contribute to the atmosphere of hostility, threatand potential violence. The atmosphere of awe and apprehension issustained and firmly established so that it endures after the army hasmoved on, and permeates the subsequent chapters. There is a


digression in this opening chapter typical of Andric's narrativemethod in the way it is developed for its own sake, dominating thechapter in which it appears for several pages.

The digression begins with an introductory paragraph:

. . . In this whole parade, despite all its glitter and solemnity andthe genuine threat and danger it represented, there was somethingunnatural and mad. And a crazy incident involving a patheticmadman almost upset it at the very outset.71

This incident, and the emotional disturbance of several of theindividuals described in the course of the novel, serve a symbolicpurpose in suggesting the decay and degeneration underlying all thepomp of the Imperial army. Its function here is to counteract theexternal impression made on the townspeople by Omer's arrival andto suggest that public display, and indeed all public behaviour, is toan extent a lie and an illusion.

The incident itself centres on a character who might have formedthe subject for a separate story; he is another of those "pathetic,disturbed creatures" common in Andric's works. When Omerarrives in Sarajevo this character, Osman, breaks through the policecordon and upsets the leading horses in the procession. Theconstable who seizes the harmless madman is instructed by one ofthe officers to take him off and beat him mercilessly, reinforcing thetheme of random violence represented by the army. Osman's story isthen told, creating a quite separate episode in the chapter. Itintroduces two related ideas of special importance in the novel: thepursuit of beauty and the human propensity for illusion.

The first chapters of the novel describe the arrival of the army andits establishment in Sarajevo, with a few examples of the behaviourof the soldiers and the fate of their prisoners given to illustrate thenature of the army and the atmosphere it engenders.

One of the features of this army which is dwelt on, and whichcontributes to the meaning of the novel, is the existence within it of alarge number of foreigners. They are mostly Poles and Hungarianswho fled to Turkey after being involved in unsuccessful uprisings intheir native lands. Since Omer is himself a convert, bom a Catholicin Croatia, these foreign officers dominate the novel. They form theaspect of Omer's army which is most frequently spoken of and which

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gives rise to the alarm, uncertainty, fear and hatred with which thearmy is viewed. They raise a series of familiar issues, such as thepower of rumour and gossip to evoke fear and hatred, as well aspeople's natural tendency to fear what is unfamiliar and somewhatoutside the normal pattern they are accustomed to. These foreignofficers cannot be seen for what they really are - even how many theyactually are - because of the rumours surrounding them. Theserumours spring from the needs of the people and have no actualconnection with the officers.

In endless anecdotes and whispering everyone wove into [thestory] something of their own torment and hatred, and, condem-ning and railing against people they did not know, they took theirrevenge on life for all the evils it had brought them and all thegood it was never going to bring.72

The hostility of all sections of the local population is emphasized,as is Omer's own contempt and distrust of the majority of them, sothat they are left entirely isolated. Omer's distrust of the "foreign-ers" springs from his intimate understanding of their backgroundand of the kind of people they are, as well as from his sense of hisown superiority. He knows that he might have been like them, andyet that he could never have been. They continue to make himuneasy, however, because of a residual sense of identity with themand still more because of his fear that others will identify him withthem.

The absurdity and hopelessness of the situation of these men,including Omer, is stressed:

Victims of despotism and violence in their own land, they hadbecome the Sultan's weapon for quelling all unrest and disturb-ance in Turkey, regardless of its aims, intentions or causes; andthey served and perished in campaigns which actually onlyspeeded up the inexorable process of decay of this condemned,outworn Empire, for which there was no cure, for the cure and thesickness would have been equally fatal.73

There is no escape from this impasse and none of the charactersrises above it through any belief or ideology which could counteractit. Where characters in Andric's other works have sought escape


through many different forms of illusion, in this case the only sourceof solace seems to be alcohol. The result is an increased impressionof hopelessness, despair and the impossibility of escape, umitigatednow because of the essentially transitory effects of this solace. Onewhole chapter of this novel is devoted to one of the foreign officers'drinking sessions, and takes the form of a hymn of praise to thefamous "Zilavka" wine from Hercegovina:

The wine had overthrown all the barriers within them, released allthe brakes, stirred up their imaginations, shrouded reality, andthrown new, miraculous bridges between their imagination andreality. All their instincts were freed, and all logic buried. Andeach of them was strolling, as in his own private garden, throughthe endless garden made up of all that is, that is not, that once wasand would never return, what never was and never would be. Andeach of them spoke of what he could see and feel there. And inorder to say what he wanted, what he had to say, none of them anylonger needed any justification or set form. It all came fromsomewhere within them. Each of them felt that the others wereasking him questions, and each knew the answer to everything.Their conversations flowed side by side, crossed one another orcollided, they had no connection with each other or coherence inthemselves. But those who were speaking felt, on the contrary,that all was following wonderfully logically, linked like questionand answer, and that these unusual conversations, smooth, intelli-gent, truthful, rich in meaning and full of delight, sprang out ofeverything. In them these serious, unhappy people, like childrenin a game, carried out great exploits, became all they desired,realized all they had ever dreamed. But in the midst of thisturbulent sea of wonders and fairy-tales, there appearedmomentarily, like rocky islands, sharp and clear observationsfrom the suspended, rejected reality of their everyday life ofexile.74

The unit of "foreigners" is the section of Omer's army whicharouses the most specific hostility. It is given prominence because ofAndric's wish to convey a strong sense of one aspect of his theme ofisolation and exile. It is echoed again in the description of prisoners

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being taken from Bosnia in chains, steadily losing their identity andbecoming nothing but the present moment of pain and anguish.

Another pronounced feature of the novel can be seen in the armyas a whole. It is described in terms which suggest something of anorganic nature, like a cloud of locusts or a wave of lava moving overthe land, spreading fear and a sense of danger in the face of anuncontrollable natural force. The soldiers cease to exist as indi-viduals; they become part of a vast body whose limits cannot beenvisaged, or movements anticipated. Like a living body, the armyhas needs which it satisfies indiscriminately. Two instances of suchneeds are illustrated: the need for food, which is met by requisition-ing livestock and supplies, and the need for women. This last isillustrated in a scene describing the rape of a feeble-minded gypsygirl, in terms which are of general relevance to the novel as a whole.In several of his works, and most notably in Ex Ponto, Andric haswritten of the powerful attraction of women as a living force existingin its own right, outside the individuals - male and female - whom itaffects. Like the idea of violence and threat spread by the army - butmore abstract - it is a natural force, identified here in the soldiers'imagination with the fierce heat of the Bosnian summer:

High above them, on the glinting waves of the shimmering heat,parallel with the tread of the troops as they marched, a vast,indefinite female body spread and rose up, with ample forms,uncertain limitations and innumerable curves and hollows; it layover the bends in the roads of the sunny hillsides and over the coolshaded valleys; you could feel it everywhere but nowhere couldyou grasp it.75

Elsewhere in the novel pain and fear are evoked in similar terms tothis account of lust: as forces from which there can be no escapesince they are everywhere and yet cannot be directly confronted.

The concomitant of such forms of pervasive oppression is thedesire to escape, already hinted at in the drinking which character-izes the life of Omer's officers. The theme of escape also forms animportant thread in the lives of all the main characters, includingOmer himself. In this connection, the symbolic role of Bosnia as aplace of exile is explicit.

In Bosnian Story we saw that evening released a man from the


clearly defined role and obvious duties of his professional commit-ments, and brought him face to face with the essence of hissituation. In the chapter entitled "In the Evening Hours" in OmerPasha Latas, we see the common preoccupations of the foreignofficers in Omer's army. Their conversation over cards and brandyalways concerns the misery of their situation and their persistentdream of escape from it. For them Bosnia symbolizes exile andisolation, as it did for the European consuls in Travnik.

For Omer Pasha himself the inhospitable land is similarlyoppressive, although his initial journey into Bosnia from his nativeCroatia was itself an escape. He is cut off from that distant formerlife, however, and his freedom of movement and action is thus feltto be severely circumscribed. His situation is similar to that of thetwo Viziers - Mehmed Pasha and Jusuf - who built the bridgesover the Drina and the Zepa, because of a similar feeling ofdisquiet: a sense of the complete gulf between the two parts of theirlives.

The description of what drove the young Mico Latas to seekexile of his own free will comes in one of the most elaboratechapters of the novel. Omer's story is interwoven with the descrip-tion of the work of a portrait-painter, who provides a counterpointto the other characters in that for him Bosnia represents a kind ofrelease and stimulus after the atmosphere of Central Europe andItaly, which he had found stultifying. In Andric's account of hislife Omer was driven out of his immediate environment by hissuperior intellect and lively imagination, which made the con-straints of life in an impoverished community and his particularchildhood duty of grazing the family cow intolerable. When acareer in the Austrian navy was closed to him because of a scandalinvolving his father, Mico took the one line of escape offered tohim and those in a similar situation throughout the history ofTurkish rule:

At such moments, when we feel that the ground is slipping awayfrom under our feet, and our hands stretch upwards in vain, weinstinctively seize what we did not previously realize we knew orhad. Before us rise up the buried experience and customs of ourforebears, which we had not guessed were living in us. At such

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moments, when it was necessary to escape from death anddishonour, and there was no way out anywhere, his ancestors hadfound a solution: Turkey.76

Andric points out that the solution was uneasy, traditionally bothinadmissible and yet the only one available. "It was in a way bothdeath and dishonour, and more bitter than either."77

His presence in Bosnia, so close to his native land, obliges Omer toconfront the bleak character of his initial choice, and increases hisrestlessness. Bosnia therefore represents for him, as for the Euro-pean soldiers in his army, the essence of their situation, from whichby definition there is no escape and yet which is fundamentallyoppressive.

The need for escape is also at the heart of the story of Omer'sHungarian wife Saida, whom he met in Romania. Like him she hadno illusion that her flight into Turkey would bring her happiness.Her view is similar to that of the young Mico Latas and theEuropean soldiers. They chose to set off into a situation of completeuncertainty, because remaining where they were would have meantcertain disgrace, and probably death.

The situation of all these characters is, then, one of severelycircumscribed opportunity; more severe in their case than that ofindividuals who have not chosen to move out of their originalcontext, but not different in kind. In this way, as in Bosnian Story,Bosnia emerges as a metaphor, a symbol of the constraints imposedon the individual by a variety of factors - social, historical, politicaland temperamental.

The closing chapters of the novel in its published form are writtenfrom the point of view of the Austrian consul at the time, Atanack-ovic. These three short chapters are no more than sketches, whichhad all been published separately as self-contained pieces. Theatmosphere that pervades them is similar to that of Bosnian Story.The situation of the foreign consuls is essentially that of outsiders,temporarily exiled in an alien land, among people with whom theyhave to deal only officially, with no obligation for closer understand-ing and communication, and very little possibility of such contact.

The first of these chapters is the most important from a generalpoint of view, as it contains a further account of Bosnia, one which


offers an example of the careful balance in Andric's work betweenprecise detail and generalization. It takes the form of the Austrianconsul's reflection at the end of the first year of Omer's presence inBosnia, and a letter he writes to Vienna describing its effect on thelocal population. The underlying theme of the letter - that the townof Travnik and the whole of Bosnia resemble a prison - is taken froman authentic letter from the Austrian consul to Prince Schwarzen-berg, dated 5 June 1851. The letter describes the presence through-out Bosnia of prisoners. When there was no longer room for them inthe fortress, the captured Beys, agas and the ulema were imprisonedin the barracks, and the army began increasingly to squeeze the localpopulation out of their houses, so that ordinary citizens were barelynoticeable. People were reduced to three categories of unequal size:"prisoners, those who pursued or guarded them, and silent, helplessonlookers". During the day the prisoners poured out into the streets,to work on various heavy municipal projects. These working partiesare vividly described, again with details taken from documents of theperiod. Many of the landowners, when they were arrested, put ontheir best clothes in order to save them; and they were often theheaviest they had because they did not know where they were to betaken and feared a cold climate. Now, in the fierce heat of thisBosnian summer, they were obliged to carry out these heavy tasks,to which they were not in any case accustomed, wearing theirthickest and finest winter clothing - for if they once let the garmentsout of their sight they would certainly be stolen. This pitiful sight ofthe "mighty fallen" attracted many onlookers, who were moved bywhat they saw; wondering, if these unimaginable things werehappening, what else might occur. Their reaction is expressed interms which reflect the leitmotiv of the novel: "It was a disgracewhich could not be supported and against which nothing could bedone."78

The chapter describes the exceptional nature of this first summerof Omer's campaign, stressing the astonishment of both Atanackovicand the local population at events around them. The details referspecifically to Omer's activities and open threats. And yet, becausethe campaign has been selected as typifying the decline of theOttoman Empire, it stands also for the collapse of the rule of force atany time, anywhere. This emerges from the whole text, but

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explicitly in the observations of the anxious onlookers: "They think:nobody's head can be safe when such an ancient and substantialbuilding collapses like this. They whisper: 'and it is always hard onthe donkey over whose back the horses are beaten',"79

Throughout Andric's work a sense of patterns repeating themsel-ves shifts the balance of his writing, despite the abundance of preciseand specific detail, away from the particular towards the universal.In Omer Pasha Latas this sense is a result of the all- pervading notionof sickness and oppression, the emphasis on constraint and escape,the theme of the pursuit of beauty, and illusion. The remainingchapters describe the lives of Omer, his wife and several figures inhis household and they all contribute in different ways to the mainthemes of the work.

There is another idea in the novel, which is not fully elaboratedbut is familiar enough from some of Andric's other works. TheCroatian painter Karas, commissioned to paint Omer's portrait,provides the technical motivation for an account of the life of bothOmer and his wife Saida, but his presence represents more than that.In all the movement towards decay which characterizes the work,Karas's activity is intended to fix a moment in static and enduringform. The painter himself plays a role similar to that of the Vizier'selephant. He is an outsider looked on with suspicion and hatred bythe people of Sarajevo as "one of Omer's many sins". His presencegives rise to the narrator's general observation:

Whenever people are oppressed, afraid, anxious about circum-stances and events, the idea of sin and the need for such an ideaarises in them. Sin, what is called sin, has to explain the sufferingsfor which people cannot find a real explanation . . . For thisreason, naturally, no one could begin to imagine that this foreign-er, a painter from Croatia, was himself an unhappy man, ashipwreck victim who had come, through the complicated laws ofan artist's fate, here, to this rebellious, exhausted and devastatedland, to find an escape for himself - he did not himself know ofwhat kind - and salvation which did not exist.80

The brief reflection on the creative process that forms the chapterentitled "The Picture" suggests that this contrasting theme might


have been further developed in the final version of the novel. It is areflection on the need for struggle in the creative process. Any ideawhich comes fully formed to the artist is equally easily lost, and leftunrecorded, to exist only in his mind. To endure it must involve theartist and require his active participation.

The painter goes on to reflect that this kind of person wascommon in positions of authority in the Ottoman administration.Centuries of fighting and governing had created them, developed inthem "simplified thinking, swift judgment, lightning-quick deci-sions, unquestioned and irreversible".81 The painter sees all this,and the picture is already virtually complete in his mind. The artistfinds this experience of rapid and complete identification with hissubject both exciting and alarming. The theme is not here developedto the extreme point of the potential imbalance of the artist, whichthe identification of Kamil with Gem in Devil's Yard can be seen toillustrate. It is here presented as a more commonplace artist'sexperience:

Whenever it happened to him that after looking for only a shorttime, the picture of the object, figure or landscape came to him"ready-made", apparently perfect, complete and fully expressed,eloquent and vivid so that he felt no further need to work on it, itmeant that he had been mistaken and gone astray, and that everyattempt to transfer that painting on to canvas was doomed inadvance as futile, and that it would never be realized. On thecontrary, when a subject left in him a deep but vague impression,incomplete and unfinished, a "dumb" picture which required agreat deal more work in order to come to life on the canvas, thenthere was some hope that something would come of it and that,perhaps, a work of art would come into being, visible andcomprehensible to others as well.82

We may perhaps detect in this passage a personal note, reflectingAndric's own feelings about his work at this time. As he was by nowa skilled and experienced writer, certain aspects of his ideas musthave virtually written themselves; and yet the complete working outof his whole plan for the novel demanded a struggle for which he nolonger really had the physical energy. What remains is a series ofpieces loosely strung together, informed by a group of related ideas,

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offering a tantalizing suggestion of what the complete novel mighthave been.

Of the various themes in the novel, which occur in Andric's otherworks with more or less emphasis, the idea of illusion dominates. Itis first introduced in the opening chapter of the work, in twodifferent ways. It is found first in the reaction of the townspeople tothe pomp and splendour of Omer's army, the effect of which isdescribed as "intoxicating", and from which they only graduallysober as they walk home to their simple houses and meagre eveningmeals. The other instance is the digression which forms an impor-tant part of this chapter: the story of Osman, who is obsessed anddriven mad by an illusion. Afraid all his life of women, Osman oneday comes upon a young girl washing herself at a pump on theoutskirts of Sarajevo. The shock - for one accustomed to thedecorum with which Moslem girls traditionally veil themselves - ofsuddenly seeing the uncovered face of the beautiful girl, shining withthe water, the bright sun and her joyous smile, is such that Osmannever recovers. At first he is as frightened as the girl and they bothrun away from the scene. But as time goes on the vision of thesmiling girl by the pump becomes a part of Osman's life, at first inthe form of a "mild, imperceptible intoxication", but later as anobsession which undermines his whole existence. He soon stopsworking to spend his days running through the streets in the vainhope of coming once again on the vision of perfect beauty he saw forthat brief instant. Osman's situation is an extreme form of that ofmany of the characters in the novel. He never imagines that the girlof his obsession is real; he thinks of her only as a vision, and yet he isdriven irresistibly to seek her, to spend his whole life in pursuit of anillusion.

Another story of a similar vein pursuit lingers on in the popularimagination in Sarajevo:

It was strange how everyone in Bosnia loved a terrible story, themore so the less joy and amusement his real life offered. It was likethat with the story of the foreigner who, like so many others, hadwanted in any way and at any price to capture that cursed,unattainable and incomprehensible female beauty, to fix it in oneplace, to penetrate it and retain it for himself.83


The story of "Kostac" becomes the subject of a song, living in theminds of the people "like the trace of a fossilized shell in the rockyshore of long-vanished seas".84

The theme of illusion is developed, as we have seen, in relation tothe foreign officers in Omer's army, particularly in their search forwhat is obviously temporary escape through alcohol. It colours alsothe stories of several other characters, including Omer and his wife.Omer's whole life is the projection of an illusion. He is described asthe type of person who from the first moments of his conscious lifestrives towards an image of himself- "Of such an exceptional personone could say that he does not really live, for his life and work are atthe service of that future being."85 The work of the painter is alsodescribed as illusory:

As soon as he was alone with his model for any length of time, thesame game always began. First of all a feeling of terrible, colddistance and loneliness which froze his fingers and clouded hiseyes. That did not last long. Then slowly and gradually theatmosphere began to change, and he in it. Each stroke of thebrush created and reinforced an invisibly thin but strong, strangeand close bond between him and his model, and with it his illusiongrew, transported and deranged him. As though under theinfluence of a drug, the firm, established relations which dividedpeople from one another vanished. The painter forgot everythingthat existed, and began to see and feel more and more clearly whatwas not and could never be as the only, intoxicating reality . . .86

The theme is connected on the one hand with the idea ofunattainable beauty and on the other with the idea of escape. Thistheme of a constant search for an escape which is recognized asimpossible is one which is implicit in much of Andric's work in therecurrent image of the prison, and developed thoroughly in Devil'sYard. The conclusion that suggests itself, then, is that prison can beseen as a metaphor for life in Andric's work as long as one acceptsthat death is final and therefore no solution. Human beings arecondemned to a sentence from which there can be no escape and yethuman life tends to be a perpetual search for an escape, for beauty,for permanence. It emerges, then, that illusion can be a positiveforce. This idea is touched on in relation to the character of Omer's

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brother Nikola, who is an incurable alcoholic, corroded by tubercu-losis. He lives constantly on the verge of suicide. From time to timehe is visited by Muhsin-Effendi, a man whose function in Omer'shousehold is always to approve all the commanding officer's sugges-tions. His nickname is Evet-Effendi, from the Turkish word mean-ing "yes". Guaranteed to see everything in the best possible light, healways greets Nikola by remarking that he is clearly well on the wayto recovery and then builds up impossible pictures of the sick man'sfuture life:

Nikola listens, increasingly attentively. And wonders, could thatreally be? It's true that this Evet-Effendi is a senile and cunningfool, but must everything he says be a lie? ... Both lies andflattery can, while remaining what they are, unwittingly cast lighton some things . . .87

Muhsin-Effendi's words give Nikola a momentary illusion of thepossibility of escape from his hopeless situation, and a reason forliving.

The final chapter concerning the consul Atanackovic, "Deceit",is devoted to his account of his dealings with Omer, which he sees asan exchange based entirely on lies. Omer is described as lying "withthe inevitability of natural phenomena, he lies as the wind blows, asa dog barks, as a cock crows; he lies because he cannot do anythingelse . . ."88

Atanackovic is described before his first meeting with Omer,practising his conversation with him, and then his reaction after-wards is given:

In amazement he wondered why he had spent a whole hourwithout saying anything, listening to the seraskier weaving andspreading out his banal half-truths and raw lies, and how he couldhave allowed his lies to get the better of his own half-truth. How?Why?89

Reflecting helplessly on his situation, the consul is overcome byanger "like drunkenness, or temporary poisoning" - in these moodsthe consul would take up his pen and write "to a friend to whom hecould say everything and who . . . did not exist".90 Atanackovic'sonly means of escape from his humiliating position is, in other


words, again through the illusion of confiding in another humanbeing. It is a similar kind of escape and illusion to those sought andfound by the consuls in Bosnian Story, writing alone in their roomseach evening. Atanackovic ends his bitter reflection on Omer'sdeceit with the words: "But, after all, we all tell lies, and we are notmuch better than he is."91

We can therefore perhaps draw the conclusion that, while he waswell aware of the potentially destructive effects of illusion, Andrichad come to believe that some degree of illusion is not only healthy,but essential in the lives of most human beings. It is an idea thatrecurs in various forms, including some of the later pages of Signs bythe Roadside.

5

Devil's Yard1

More than is the case with many of Andric's other works, the senseof Devil's Yard depends closely on its intricate structure.

The composition is one that Andric had used earlier for anotherstory in the Brother Petar group: "Torso". It is a system ofconcentric circles forming successive frames, focusing increasinglyon the central point of the tale. The Petar stories in any case all havea similar outer frame, since each of them is explicitly the "story of astory". Petar is a man with a particular gift for story-telling:

In everything he said there was something cheerful and wise at thesame time. But, besides, there hovered around each of his words aspecial kind of tone, like a halo of sound, which you do not find inthe speech of others and which remained quivering in the air evenafter the spoken word had faded. Because of this each of his wordsconveyed more than it meant in ordinary speech.2

This description comes from the beginning of "Torso". In Devil'sYard there is a reminder of the particular quality of Petar's speech,although here it is much less distinct:

And now, as he looked at his grave in the snow, the young manwas actually thinking of Petar's story-telling. And he would haveliked for a third and fourth time to say how well he could tellstories. But it cannot be said.3

In the context of Andric's work as a whole these hints andsuggestions form part of a continuing discussion on the nature of art,and the particular quality of the statements of individual artistswhich impose themselves on the minds of their readers or audience.More particularly, they contribute to Andric's reflections on thenature of story-telling, the varying situations in which stories are


told, the varying needs they fulfil and the varying manner in whichthey are related. In Devil's Yard this theme is developed in somedetail since the story is told by four separate narrators, and is set in aprison where the recounting of anecdotes is virtually the soleoccupation of the inmates.

In this work Andric gives quite a detailed account of the narrativestyle of Petar and the other main narrator, Haim. They are different,but Andric's point, as elsewhere in his work, is that "it is best to let aman tell his story as he will", without interference, interruption orquestion. Petar lends his tales particular emotional and psychologicalcolouring by virtue of his standing as a monk and his great age - hisstories are all told from his cell bed where - old, ill, but full ofwisdom and experience - he selects episodes from his long life whichacquire an added dimension of seriousness because of the context inwhich they are told. The qualities Petar then brings to his tales arebalance, tranquillity, sympathy and a quiet optimism. Sensitive tothe feelings and situation of others and with no personal axe to grind,Petar is a wholly reliable observer. But in Devil's Yard Andric alsogives an example of a quite different kind of story-teller: one whowill always invent where he does not know the facts, but whosetalents should not therefore be dismissed. In a long parenthesis,which forms an introduction to the core of the work, Andric makes adirect comment on the need for variety and open-mindedness inassessing works of art:

We are always more or less inclined to condemn those who talk alot, particularly about things which do not concern them directly,even to speak with contempt of them, as chatterboxes and tediousgossips. And we tend not to remember that this human, so humanand so common, failing has its good sides as well. For what wouldwe know about the minds and hearts of others, about other peopleand consequently about ourselves, about other places and sights,which we have never seen and shall never have the opportunity ofseeing, if it were not for people like this who have a need tocommunicate in speech or writing what they have seen and heard,and what they felt or thought in that connection? Little, verylittle. And, if their accounts are imperfect, coloured by personalpassions and needs, or even inaccurate, we are ourselves possessed

"Devil's Yard" 191

of reason and experience and we can assess them and comparethem one with another, accept or reject them, in part or wholly. Inthis way, something of human truth is always left for those wholisten or read patiently.4

As in the other tales told by Brother Petar, the outer framework ofhis cell is established before the story itself is told. We have seenalready that it is Andric's intention always to remove the story as faras possible from himself, to leave it on its own to communicate itsfull significance without his personal intervention. The variousdevices used to this end in Andric's works serve to increase theobjectivity of his tone. They also contribute to one of the recurrentthemes of his work: that no episode or individual is of intrinsicsignificance; individual stories tend to be placed in a context widerthan themselves, making their own significance relative. In Devil'sYard this relativity is most explicitly developed. The outer frame isused to establish just that relative insignificance of individual livesvividly. Petar has died, and a young monk watches from the oldman's cell window as the grave is covered in snow. The snowdeprives everything of its true shape, giving it one colour and oneform:

All that could be seen was the trace of a narrow path through thefresh snow; the path had been trodden out the day before duringBrother Petar's funeral. At the end of the path a thin line oftrodden snow widened out into a uneven circle, and the snowaround it was coloured pink with softened clay, and it all lookedlike a fresh wound in the general whiteness which stretched as faras the eye could see and merged imperceptibly with the greydesert of the sky still full of snow.5

The snow blurs the features of individuals and events and causesthem to merge into a more or less amorphous, monochromegenerality. This is the broadest scale, the immediate process ofobliteration in the uninterrupted succession of events which buriesthe past in a mass of accumulated moments as surely as the snow.The image of the all-enveloping snow is not therefore left on its own.The immediate reality is illustrated by the activity of the monks whoare making an inventory of all Petar has left behind him. Life goes


on, declaring that whatever we regarded as our own in the materialworld was simply borrowed, as was the brief span of our life. Theconsistency of Andric's message and method can be seen in theclosing paragraphs of Devil's Yard., where he returns to the outerframe. The first paragraph of this closing page consists of a whollynegative statement:

And this is the end. There is nothing any more. Only the graveamong the invisible graves of the other monks, lost like asnowflake in the deep snow which spreads like an ocean andtransforms everything into a cold desert without name or sign.There is no more story nor story-telling . . . There is nothing.Only the snow and the simple fact that we die and go under theearth.6

But then the finality of this statement is characteristically reduced,because even at this stage Andric removes himself: "So it seemed tothe young man by the window . . ."7

It is reduced still further because the final words of the workdescribe the gradual fading of the story the young monk has beenrecalling, and the steady impingement on his consciousness of thesounds of the monks' counting and the clattering of Petar's tools.

The second frame is formed by the young monk's recollection ofPetar's stories about his time in the Constantinople prison known asDevil's Yard. These memories have a special quality because Petarspoke more, and more compellingly, about these two months thanany other episode in his life. Petar then takes over the narrativedirectly, to describe the prison and its inmates, and the circum-stances in which he met the young Turk whose story forms the coreof Devil's Yard. Petar's role here is similar to that of Andric's idealnarrator: that of an observer and listener who acts as a passivevehicle for stories which are then seen as self-contained entities, notas part of Petar's own experience. This is not the case in all thestories that concern him but it is true of "Torso", whose compositionalso falls into separate frames and in which, again, Petar is simplythe audience of a strange tale which he later relates to others. Thisstructure clarifies the outline of the central tale. In "Torso" there arethree frames: the cell, the circumstances of Petar's life in which the

"Devil's Yard" 193

episode occurred, and the focal point - Petar's observation, througha window, of the strange figure whose story is then told him by athird party.

This basic structure is more complex in Devil's Yard: Petar meetsthe young Turk, Kamil, and hears much of his tale directly. There isa further narrator, however, the character Haim, whose verbosestory-telling technique was described above. From the point of viewof the story itself Haim's function is to inform Petar of the details ofKamil's past (known to him because they are both from Smyrna) andof his last days in prison - information to which Petar could not haveaccess. More important, however, is his function in the structure ofthe whole work: the texture is deliberately fragmented, broken upinto eight distinct chapters, an introduction and an epilogue. Eachchapter is related by a separate narrator: the first is Petar's necessaryaccount of the prison, which has no place in the central scheme ofseven chapters in which the fourth acquires its full force as the focalpoint by virtue of its position. The six chapters surrounding thiscentral chapter are related alternately by the two main narrators:Petar, Haim, Petar - Kamil - Petar, Haim, Petar. The effect of thisfragmentation is to slow down the pace of the work and ensure theprominence of the central chapter, and also to reinforce the nature ofthe work as the "story of a story".

We have seen that in many of Andric's works the setting of aparticular tale is designed to establish a state of mind in the reader,which then determines his response to the story itself. The settingsthus tend to have a significance beyond themselves: to be more orless allegorical. In Devil's Yard this pattern is clear and the allegori-cal setting is involved in the central theme.

The image of the "prison" had a special resonance for Andric as aresult of his prison experience during the First World War. We havesome evidence as to how freshly this experience remained in hismind in the fact that, of the four published sketches which describeit, three were published only long after the War, in 1952 and I960.8

These sketches are concerned largely with an external description ofincidents affecting the young prisoner who is the protagonist, andthere is a recurrent theme of the contrast between the brilliant sunoutside and the small patch on the cell floor that alters its shapeaccording to the angle of the sun through the bars on the little


window. For a clearer understanding of the way in which Andric'sprison experience became internalized, we have to return to ExPonto and Anxieties. From these prose poems we gain some insightinto the degree to which Andric's immediate experience of imprison-ment affected his response to the world beyond the physical walls ofthe gaol as well. Bosnian Story is also distinctly coloured by thetheme of confinement: within a determined space, a role, official andprivate obligations, and a culture.

In Devil's Yard this theme is explored both as an external settingand as a more general expression of the kinds of restrictions placedon human lives which informs not only Bosnian Story but so many ofAndric's shorter works.

The Turkish prison in Constantinople - a detention centre inwhich criminals and suspects are held before being sent to trial orexile or before they are released - is described in terms that lend thewhole work its special flavour. The first striking feature of theprison, which is very large - a whole town of prisoners and guards"9

- is the haphazard nature of its population. People are arrested onthe merest suspicion on the principle that it is easier to release aninnocent person than to search through Constantinople for theguilty. We know already that Petar is there fortuitously: "Allbecause of a misfortune that befell Brother Petar, through no fault ofhis own, by a crazy conjunction of circumstances, in that troubledperiod when authority ceases to distinguish the innocent from theguilty."10

Some of the terms in which the prison is described are familiarfrom elsewhere in Andric's work. These are the terms in whichAndric describes the natural world in general: "So the Yardceaselessly sifts the variegated crowd of its population and, alwaysfull, it is constantly being filled and emptied anew."11 These wordsare reminiscent of the account of life itself given in The Bridge on theDrina: "Life constantly spends itself, and yet endures . . ."

It is implicitly suggested that we should read the description of theprison as an account of the world itself, but it is a world which hasspecific qualities. In making their arrests, and thereby determiningthe population of the prison, the police work according to some logicof their own. This idea is again familiar from Andric's description ofthe natural world elsewhere. The existence of some "logic" inacces-

"Devil's Yard" 195

sible to human reason is tantamount to denying the reality of such"logic". When the wind blows "the whole of that Devil's Yardreverberates and roars like a vast child's rattle in a giant's palm andthe people in it dance, writhe, collide with one another and knockinto the walls like grain in that rattle".12

The key figure in the prison is its governor, Latifaga, known as"Karagoz" after the grotesque character in the Turkish shadowtheatre. Karagoz has a dual role. Most clearly he represents thatarbitrary logic that governs the natural world and human destiny.He has evolved a system of behaviour towards the prisoners which isentirely unpredictable. He can appear in the Yard at any momentand start his idiosyncratic "interrogation". His manner is alwaysdifferent. At one moment he will suddenly announce to one prisonerthat he is free without explanation, and at the next he will tellanother protesting his innocence that it is precisely "innocent"prisoners whom the authorities now require, and he has thereforejust condemned himself.

At another level, however, Karagoz's role is apparently almostreversed: he represents authority -

This strange, endless game of his was incomprehensible but itseemed that in fact he never believed anyone; not only the accusedor witnesses, he did not even believe himself, and for this reasonhe needed a confession as the only point which was at all fixed andfrom which one could in this world, in which everyone was guiltyand worthy of condemnation, maintain at least the appearance ofsome kind of justice and something resembling order. And hesought this confession, hunted it, squeezed it out of a man with adesperate effort, as though he were fighting for his own life anddisentangling his hopelessly confused accounts with vice andcrime and cunning and disorder.13

In other words, the purpose of authority is to impose a semblanceof order on chaos, and its endeavour is not seriously undermined byits awareness of its own arbitrariness. The population of the prisonaccepts the prevailing method of government: "They were allaccustomed to Karagoz; they had grown used to him in their ownway. They grumbled about him, but in the way one grumbles aboutone's fate and the life one loves."14


Like the vast majority of peoples everywhere, the prison inmatesaccept the particular style of government imposed on them, regard-less of its strength or justice.

The allegorical setting of this work is thus complex: it involvesexternal, arbitrary restrictions on all aspects of individuals' lives,from the most general to the most concrete; and authority, itsultimate illogicality and the consequent blindness of its power.

The setting is established in detail in the first chapter andreferred to frequently throughout the narrative, reinforcing theother main strands of the work, and giving Andric the chance tomake general comments of various kinds. An instance is thestatement that Petar talked "a great deal about the life of the Yardas a whole and about the interesting, comic, pathetic, disturbedpeople in it; they were closer to him and better known than thethieves, murderers and sinister criminals whom he tried to avoid asfar as possible".15 These words provide an adequate description ofthe kind of characters to which Andric is frequently attracted in hiswriting.

One of these "interesting, pathetic, disturbed" people is theyoung Turk Kamil, who beds down next to Petar one night. Thereis a certain air of mystery about the young man: as he thinks abouthim Petar is never able to remember the exact moment when hearrived, just as he is unable to recall certain other facts about him.The first thing Petar remembers noticing about him is a smallleather-bound book.

From his first glance at his face, Petar realizes that the youngman is in some way ill, not physically, but Petar recognizes hiseyes: "He had seen similar eyes. There are people like this who areafraid or ashamed of something, or who wish to hide something."16

As we know from Andric's work as a whole, characters who aremore or less disturbed mentally have a privileged position in hisworld. They are more susceptible than those who are fullybalanced, and adjusted to currents underlying the surface of life.Their angle of vision is distorted, but it allows them an insight intoan aspect of the forces governing human life which are usually notdirectly acknowledged. So we may suspect from the first thatKamil's "illness", which isolates him from his fellow-humanbeings, also colours his experience of the world is a particular way

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to the exclusion of any others. A bond of sympathy is immediatelyestablished between the two men, enabling Petar to enter intoKamil's world with a special warmth.

Since the work is the "story of a story", reference is madethroughout to the process of story-telling; the initial frame in Petar'scell sets the tone. After this, in the Yard itself, one of the prisoners'chief occupations is the relating of anecdotes. These are generallystories whose purpose is to illustrate the prowess or virility of theteller rather than to entertain his audience. The prisoners do notreally listen to one another, dismissing the idle boasts of their fellowsas a temporary distraction, not worthy of their full attention. Thesecond main narrator, Haim, stands out from this background as aman with a particular gift for story-telling, and a particular need totalk. In fact, Petar considers that his talkativeness has brought himto the prison. The undisciplined nature of his speech makes him anunreliable witness, but his account is not coloured by any particularpassion: he is a Jew and shares the privileged position of Jewsgenerally in Andric's work, that of being freer than other individualswhose allegiance is usually either Christian and Western or Moslemand "Oriental". Petar virtually shares this non-sectarian objectivity,since he refuses to be affected by artificial barriers between men.

Haim is described by a generalization typical of Andric:

One of those who are involved their whole life in a hopelessquarrel lost in advance, with the people and society they springfrom. In his passion to say and explain everything, to disclose allpeople's mistakes and wrong-doings, to unmask the evil andacknowledge the righteous, he went far beyond what an ordinaryhealthy person can see and discover . . . And he did not simplydescribe the people he talked about, but entered into theirthoughts and desires, of which they were often not themselvesaware, and which he revealed to them . . .17

Andric's own direct comment in parenthesis suggests that weshould not dismiss such an exaggerated interest in others as unreli-able, since we can always learn from it something about our fellow-men and consequently about ourselves. What seems to be impliedhere is that we should not refuse to pay attention to stories, and byextension to works of art, with which we do not feel complete


sympathy: Petar becomes irritated by Haim's perpetual suspicion ofothers and by his manner, and yet acknowledges that he is a vitalsource of information.

What Kamil communicates to Petar, through their mutual sym-pathy, is quite different in kind from Haim's information. Kamil'sown story is superficially unremarkable: born in Smyrna, the son ofa beautiful Greek girl and a Turkish pasha, he showed an earlypredilection for books and learning. When prevented by the Greekcommunity from marrying the Greek girl of his choice he turnedentirely to his studies, associating only with scholars like himself.

Several issues are involved even in this brief outline: first thefamiliar fact that the circumstances of an individual's birth deter-mine the course of his life in a way which is beyond his control. Thefact that Kamil's mother, when a young and beautiful widow, hadrefused many Greek suitors and chosen instead a sixty-year-old Turkexplains the hostility of the Greek community towards young Kamiland their refusal to let the old Turk take a second Greek girl fromthem now, through his son. To Kamil their behaviour is quiteincomprehensible. Through his parents, then, Kamil is caught upnot merely in a local quarrel between families, but in the wholeuniversal quarrel between Islam and Christianity, between East andWest. Kamil is a solitary figure, cut off from his fellow-men by ideashe cannot accept through no choice of his own, drawn instead to theworld of scholarship. The future course of his life is determined bythis innocent predilection and the fact that it is intellectuals likehimself whom people in authority suspect and resent, because theoutlook of these people tends to be limited by their own self-interest,and their insistence on "law and order" cuts them off completelyfrom the world of the imagination. We have been prepared alreadyby the description of Karagoz, the prison governor, for the notionthat "law and order" are ultimately an arbitrary fabrication, imposedon the chaotic forces of life to give them an artificial semblance oflogic. The extraordinary narrow-mindedness of the mistaken"cause" is also illustrated in the fanaticism of the father of the girlKamil wishes to marry: "I am a small man in reputation andpossessions, but I am not small in my faith and my fear of God. AndI prefer to lose my life and to despatch my daughter, who is my onlychild, into the sea, rather than give her to an infidel."18 A similar

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narrow-mindedness characterizes the attitude of all the representa-tives of authority with whom Kamil comes into contact.

For Kamil is arrested and sent to the prison in Constantinoplebecause his preoccupation with books eventually arouses suspicion.That comes about through a combination of the natural antipathy ofthose in authority towards a man such as Kamil, and maliciousgossip, to which any individual whose behaviour deviates from theaccepted norm is everywhere exposed. The rumour is spread thatKamil has become obsessed with one particular theme of hisresearch to the point where he believes himself actually to be thehistorical figure who has become the object of his special interest: theTurkish prince Cem, younger brother of Sultan Bayazid. To the earsof those in authority, men of strictly limited imagination andintelligence, the mere mention of an interest in the Ottoman throne,albeit of a fifteenth-century monarch, is enough to condemn a manas potentially dangerous. It so happens that the relevant official inSmyrna is hard and zealous, "an obtuse and pathologically distrust-ful man, who trembled even in his sleep lest any political malprac-tice, plot or the like should escape him".19 He has the mostdangerous attribute of a man of power. He is himself insecure andfearful, interpreting all government directives as a direct criticism ofhis personal inadequacy.

Eventually Kamil is interrogated, while held in Devil's Yard. Liketheir superior, Karagoz, the two officials are interested only ineliciting a confession from their prisoner, regardless of its basis inany facts. Their requirements and expectations are totally at variancewith Kamil's experience and understanding of the world. Anymeaningful discussion between them is a priori impossible.

"Nothing you say has any connection whatsoever with me or withmy ideas",20 Kamil states in despair, knowing that nothing he sayscan alter his situation. But the situation in which the three men findthemselves has its own inexorable pattern: the interrogators goadKamil until he gives them what they require, a "confession" that heis identical with Sultan Cem, "that is with a man who, moreunfortunate than any man, has entered an impasse, with no possibleescape, and who does not want, and is not able, to deny himself, notto be what he is".

And Kamil suffers the common fate of intellectuals who arouse


the suspicion and hostility of the machinery of power in an absolutistregime: he disappears without trace.

Kamil's story, suggestive and moving as it is, is not in itselfparticularly unusual except in the degree to which he does indeedidentify himself with Gem, the Turkish prince. In the scheme ofDevil's Yard the central chapter, the fifth, is Kamil's own account ofthe life of Gem. Just as Kamil's story gains clarity of outline by beingdivided between the two narrators, Petar and Haim, so Gem's storytoo stands out here as a separate entity, a story complete in itself, astory which can be transmitted down the generations.

Gem's story is powerful, archetypal in the extremity of thesituation it describes. This quality is explicit in the words with whichit opens:

It is, in a new and solemn form, the ancient story of two brothers.From time immemorial, there have always been and are constantlyreborn and renewed in the world - two rival brothers. One ofthem is older, wiser, stronger, closer to the world and real life . . .The other is his absolute opposite. A man of short life, ill fortuneand a false first step, a man whose aspirations always go far beyondwhat is necessary and above what is possible . . .21

Briefly, Gem, the younger son of Mehmed the Conqueror andfavoured by the old sultan to succeed him, claims half the empirefrom his brother Bayazid. After his inevitable defeat, Gem takesrefuge on the island of Rhodes under the protection of Pierred'Aubusson and his Knights of St John. He thus unwittingly placeshimself at the centre of a complex web of international intrigue andGreat Power politics, involving the kings of France and Hungary,the Sultan of Egypt and the Pope, in which he remains caught upuntil the end of his life. He is used as a bargaining point by Bayazidand the Western powers in their negotations with and campaignsagainst one another. The restrictions placed on him are thusabsolute: his initial misfortune seems to have been conditioned inpart by the qualities of his own character, and in part by the roleimposed on him by the circumstances of his birth and the primordialpattern of strife between brothers. As he endeavours to escape therestrictions of this pattern he becomes entrammelled in the strife

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between countries and ideologies which makes him physically aprisoner for the rest of his life:

The whole of the known and inhabited world, divided into twocamps, Turkish and Christian, contains no refuge for him. Forhere or there, he can be one thing only: a sultan. Victorious ordefeated, alive or dead. That is why he is a slave for whom there isno longer any escape, even in his thoughts or dreams . . ,22

The scale of his ambition is echoed in the scale of his fall: "Iwanted to make an instrument of all that the world is and contains,with which to conquer and subdue the world, but now this world hasmade an instrument of me."23

Gem's story finds a ready response in Kamil not because he hasany worldly ambitions whatever, or for any superficial similarity oftheir situations, but because it describes a concentrated and extremeform of the kind of limitations to his choices and actions whichKamil himself has experienced in his own modest way. Kamil was,like Cem, born with certain characteristics into a world dividedaccording to ideologies and interests which have no meaning forhim. When faced with the absolute barrier dividing him from thewoman of his choice, Kamil suddenly sees clearly "just how muchthere was that could divide a man from the woman he loved, and ingeneral people from each other".24

The extent to which the archetypal "legend" of Sultan Cem, withits additional dimension of itself repeating a timeless pattern, arousessuch a strong feeling of recognition in Kamil contributes towards aclearer understanding of the place of "legend" in Andric's works.The implication appears to be that in our day-to-day lives we shouldnot expect to come upon situations which are strikingly reminiscentof those "few main legends of mankind" to which Andric refers in"Conversation with Goya". Indeed, if we read through all Andric'sworks with this explicit intention of his in mind, we might not beable to discover obvious examples of situations repeating themselveswith any exact correspondence. It is the central, emotional parallel towhich Andric refers.

Kamil's sense of identification with Gem's story is, however,particularly intense by virtue of a further dimension, notably thewhole question of identity. Kamil is arrested and imprisoned simply


because of what he is: a man drawn to the world of books andlearning, in which scholars can communicate freely regardless oftheir beliefs and origins. The malicious gossip which leads toKamil's arrest is founded not on any action of his but on the chargethat he purports actually to be a pretender, claimant to a fifteenth-century throne. To a degree that is almost the case, since Kamil feelssuch profound sympathy for the prince that it virtually amounts toimagining himself fully in his situation. To this extent Kamil isprepared to make the statement that his interrogators demand ofhim: that he is in fact Gem. Kamil's perspective is entirely differentfrom that of his interrogators; to him the statement means anexpression of emotional and intellectual affinity, while to the officialsit is an admission of guilt.

Two main issues are involved here: the irrevocable, bindingnature of the spoken word and its consequent power for good or ill,and the degree to which the identity of an individual is determined inthe eyes of others by their interpretation of his words. One of theauthor's parentheses expresses this central idea of Devil's Yard'.

(I! - Weighty word, which in the eyes of those before whom it isspoken determines our place, fatefully and unalterably, often goesfar beyond or lags far behind what we know about ourselves,beyond our will and above our strength. A terrible word, which,once spoken, binds and identifies us for ever with all that we haveimagined and said and with which we never thought of identifyingourselves, but with which we have in fact long been one.)25

Kamil's whole crisis depends on this issue. In Petar's sympatheticeyes Kamil has endangered himself, not for the same reason that theauthorities pursue him, but because he feels that the young man'sobsession with Cem is unbalanced. Petar does not remember exactlywhen, but at some point in his account of the prince's life Kamilbegins to speak in the first person. To the rational outside worldKamil's direct, unequivocal statement "I am he" seems to suggestinsanity. In fact it is the expression of a fundamental attitude whichhas made the development and function of myth and legend so vitalin human culture. Andric is no doubt here making a direct referenceto Thomas Mann's "formula of myth" - "Ich bin's". The essential

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feature of categorical statements such as "I am the son of God","This is my flesh and blood", is their mystery. Kamil is quite clearlynot Cem, and his statement is consequently disturbing. Hisidentification should not, however, be thought of as "real", butmythical. It is through a masterly, understated suggestion alongthese lines that Devil's Yard is transformed from a bleak indictmentof authority, and an account of the strict limitations on an indi-vidual's freedom of action, into a sober statement of faith, albeitambiguous, in the power of the imagination.

Petar is fascinated by Kamil's obsession, to the point that he isunable to act as reason dictates he should and try to deflect the youngman from the brink of "madness": "What is not, what cannot andought not to be was stronger than all that is, that exists, obvious andreal, as the only possibility."26

Andric is always concerned with the truth underlying apparentreality. Kamil's obsession is expressed in terms of his having alliedhimself with that underlying truth to the extent of cutting himself offfrom superficial reality. Petar's sympathy for Kamil enables him torespond to him in a way that Haim cannot, and the existence of thetwo narrators now contributes to the theme of the function of theimagination. Haim's role is to convey information, which does notinvolve him emotionally, and then to pass on. Petar's is in a way, andto a lesser degree, to parallel Kamil's obsession with Cem, and so togive his story continuity. For Kamil settles in Petar's imagination, asCem has in Kamil's.

In this way the work can be seen as, among other things, ameditation on the nature of the artistic process; on the different waysof telling stories, the varying degrees of involvement of the artistwith his material, the various human needs to which different worksof art correspond.

One of the essential characteristics of Petar's meetings with Kamilis their mysterious quality. Kamil arrives in the half-light, at dusk,and Brother Petar cannot remember any details of his arrival:

When he thought about him, later, often, Brother Petar couldnever remember exactly when he had come, or how he had come,looking for a little space, nor what he had said. With people whobecome close to us, we usually forget all those details of our first


contact with them; it seems as though we had always known themand they had always been with us.27

Later, as they talk, Kamil appears vague, absent-minded: "He didnot complete a single thought, even the most trivial. He would oftenstop in the middle of a sentence. His glance kept straying into thedistance."28 Kamil is portrayed as not quite of this world: he makesno movement or sound when he arrives, he scarcely even breathes.He barely touches his food.

As their friendship grows Kamil talks to Petar about Gem, but,again, Petar can never remember when or how he began. Petar's lastsight of Kamil is of the young man disappearing round a corner inthe yard. Once again it is dusk.

Kamil's physical presence has been reduced to a minimum,emphasizing the extent to which he no longer belongs to the "real"world. His reality is his identification with Cem. The same essen-tially mysterious quality surrounds the way in which Petar laterremembers Kamil: in the half-light of dawn, Petar seems to seeKamil in the cloud of smoke from his cigarette. The two men talk.Petar addresses him as he used to speak "to the young monks in themonastery when they were overcome by taedium vitae".29 He triesgently to persuade Kamil not to despair: it is dawn and there will bea dawn after every darkness; Kamil will recover. Protesting that"one cannot recover from oneself'30, Kamil is irrevocably impris-oned in his darkness; he simply cannot see the beauties of God'ssunlit morning which Petar points out to him. The monk's lastthoughts in connection with Kamil can perhaps be seen as astatement of his religious faith:

I repeat to myself that there is another, different world besidesthis Yard, that this is not all, nor for ever. And I endeavour not toforget this and to hold on-to this idea. But I feel that the Yarddrags a man, like a whirlpool, down towards some dark depths.31

Perhaps, however, in the context of the whole allegory of theYard, it would be legitimate to see this other world as being theworld of the imagination, the world of books and stories, which giveshuman life continuity, despite the apparent finality of the disappear-ance of Petar's grave under the snow.

"Devil's Yard" 205

Such a brief account of this complex work cannot do it justice. Itsintricate writing touches on a number of different issues and raisesquestions which are never answered. Apparent conclusions arealways questioned or countered, so that they become as elusive andtenuous as the whole question of an individual's identity touched onin the central parenthesis.

6

Essays and Reflective Prose

Essays and critical writings

Andric wrote a number of essays, reviews and articles which werescattered through various newspapers and periodicals. They were notcollected in book form until the writer's death, but now a good idea ofthe range of Andric's interests in these writings, and their quality, canbe gained from the selections published. Until recently these writingshave been considered only as a kind of appendage to Andric's fictionand verse, and the writer himself has said that he wrote them only inthe intervals between his fictional works, when he was exhausted.Nevertheless, it would be equally appropriate to consider them beforethe rest of Andric's works, since they contain many ideas andpreoccupations which are developed fully in his fiction.

These writings cover a wide variety of subject matter, reflectingmany aspects of twentieth-century cultural life, particularly ofYugoslavia but including also essays on such figures as Goya, Heine,Gorky and Walt Whitman. They fall into three main categories: shortreviews of individual works, analyses of specific aspects of a writer'swork, written often on the occasion of an anniversary or othercelebration, and longer essays springing from Andric's own particularinterests.

Andric began writing reviews in 1914. The published selectionsshow a relatively prolific output in that year and in the yearsimmediately following the First World War, reduced thereafter to oneor two pieces a year, with a renewed burst of activity in 1945 and 1946.The earliest reviews, marking the beginning of Andric's literarycareer and written between 1914 and 1920, are often impatientlynegative and arrogant, but after these beginnings the tone becamesteadily more sober and thoughtful with Andric's growing confidenceand stature as a writer.

Essays and Reflective Prose 207

The first of his articles to receive attention was a portrait of theCroatian writer and critic A. G. Matos, on the occasion of his deathin 1914.1 Matos had made a great impact on the cultural life ofCroatia in his day. In Zagreb he was known as "Rabbi" and wasregarded as the chief authority in all questions of art and taste. Thegently mocking tone of Andric's article offers an insight into thepersonality of Matos and his influence on others. Andric's style inthis piece conveys much of the energy and rapid impressionisticquality of Matos's own critical writings:

His restless eyes observe everything, his inquisitive mind skimsover everything and reacts to everything swiftly, abruptly, bit-terly, delightedly, justly, unjustly, no matter, it always reacts. It isas though all things and people and events were invisibly inter-viewing him, and he, with a speed that amazes, gives his answersunsparingly personally, frequently unjustly, but he always givesthem, and consequently there is little question of precision or skillin his answers.2

As might be expected, in these critical pieces Andric tends toconsider each artist in his historical context. Here the atmosphere ofthe Croatia of Matos's day is evoked in an impressionistic styletypical of the Young Bosnians. As this was the atmosphere in whichAndric began his literary activity and which he subsequently left totake up his diplomatic career in Belgrade, it is worth quoting:

His Croatia is somnolent, dejected; apathetic to the point of tears. . . "No one cares about us, not even we ourselves." His Croatiais a beautiful, downtrodden land, thrown into slavery by anhistorical absurdity, betrayed, exploited, half de-Croaticized. It ispainful to live in the Croatian night. . . People's eyes have grownheavy with waiting for the sun from the West, seeking the dawnfrom where it has never broken on anyone . . . The whole ofCroatia is snoring gracelessly. Only the poets and terrorists areawake.3

This article is typical of many of Andric's essays. They do notoffer a distanced critical appraisal of the merit of a given artist'swork, but an account of the essential qualities of that work. Many ofthem are in fact imaginative portraits. In a more restrained style, the


passage quoted on Mates could have formed one of the charactersketches included in Signs by the Roadside. Another illustration ofthis approach is provided by the beginning of the essay on WaltWhitman, written in his centenary year, 1919:4

This is not poetry from which one could extract one word or oneline, dissecting and measuring, it is the work of a life and theexpression of a personality . . . His life and his poetry . . . areclosely connected like the light and dark rings of growth anddevelopment in a tree trunk.5

It can be seen, then, that there are several points of contactbetween these essays and Andric's fictional portraits, particularly inview of the fact that many of those portraits are based on historicalfigures. As the longer essays - as opposed to brief reviews - tend tobe concerned with artists or historical figures to whom he was drawnfor a particular reason, his starting point in selecting historicalfigures to be portrayed in his works of fiction and his essays issimilar. They represent certain abstract ideas. In the works of fictionthe details of the characters' lives may be modified to convey theseideas as they are developed at greater length. But, however they aretreated, all these portraits contribute to Andric's exploration of therelationship between "history" and "legend". The two are closelyconnected: "history" is seen as one dimension of the lives we all leadand "legend" as what the human imagination extracts from randomexperience, the selected historical fact which survives transience.

Several essays illustrate Andric's approach is selecting historicalfigures: "The Legend of St Francis of Assisi",6 "The Legend ofLaura and Petrarch",7 "Simon Bolivar Liberator".8 Each of thesefigures appeals to Andric's imagination for a different reason. SimonBolivar, on the centenary of his death, is described as "an unusualfigure, who bears the finest of all titles a living man can attain -Liberator".9 St Francis represents the ascetic ideal, which Andricmaintains is not understood, let alone practised, in the twentiethcentury.10 Petrarch is discussed on the 600th anniversary of his firstseeing Laura. Andric is interested in the facts of this love story asthey have been handed down to illustrate his definition of traditionas "gossip sanctioned by time".11

In his works of fiction, where Andric explores the circumstances


out of which the "legend" emerged, his characters are seen tooclosely, from too many angles to appear as "heroes". Where acharacter has the reputation of a "hero", like Alija -Derzelez orMustafa the Hungarian, Andric is concerned with the discrepancybetween his reputation, conditioned by the needs of others, and thetrue nature of the character.

All these essays illustrate the method of a creative artist ratherthan an objective critic, an ability to enter into the minds of hissubjects and to identify himself with their situation and theirattitudes. This human capacity for identification with others was, ofcourse, explored in Devil's Yard, in the extreme case of Kamil andthe more sober manner of Brother Petar. In his essays Andricdemonstrates the warm sympathy of Petar, the ideal, self-effacingstory-teller who allows his characters to speak for themselves.

Andric returns with particular sympathy to two figures of outstan-ding importance in the Serbian cultural tradition to which hebelongs: the collector of folk literature and reformer of the Serbianlanguage Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (1787-1864) and the Mon-tenegrin poet P. P. Njegos (1813-51).

Vuk Karadzic is admired for his personal qualities and for hisinstinctive literary gift. In his essays, Andric does not question thevalue of Vuk's achievements in the sense of acknowledging thatthere may have been a negative side to his uncompromising attitude.As is the case with Andric's fictional characters, while Vuk is on thestage he dominates it and Andric looks out at his opponents largelyfrom Vuk's point of view. The reader is himself involved andconvinced by Andric's presentation of the case.

Andric takes a quotation from one of Vuk's letters as a motto todefine his essential quality of determination against great odds: "Neda se. Ali ce dati!" It is impossible to render its terseness exactly butit could be clumsily translated: "It's hard. But it will be done!"Andric admires Vuk for his great personal courage, his clear sightand unwavering belief in the future and in the righteousness of hisaims. He likens him to one of the great explorers, setting out into theunknown and convincing others of the existence of new worlds.

Vuk's instinctive recognition of artistic quality has been acknow-ledged in connection with his selection of the best examples of theSouth Slav oral tradition. Despite poor health and financial hard-


ship, Vuk would travel great distances in search of the best versionof a particular ballad. He recognized the talents of individual singersand would return to them again and again to record their songs.Andric examines another aspect of Vuk's literary gift in his essay on"Vuk as a writer",12 seeing in his historical writings and descriptionsof aspects of Serbian life the qualities which denote a true realist:"observation, selection and a rare sense of the characteristicdetail".13 Andric suggests that it is on the basis of this observationand selection that we acknowledge the writer as "witness" and accepthis account as convincing and truthful. These qualities are preciselythose which Andric pursues in his own writing. Another generalpoint which could equally well apply to Andric's style is what hedescribes as the "calm" of Vuk's writing: "a calm which is essentialto a good writer, for the writer must excite his readers; he must nothimself fall before them in rapture".14

Perhaps the most important aspect of the achievement of VukKaradzic for Andric, however, is the fact that his work is focusedentirely on the traditions and culture of the Serbian people. Vukderives his strength from his roots and close connection with thesepeople. Andric describes Vuk as better aware than anyone of hispeople's backwardness under Turkish occupation, but all the moredetermined to seek out and preserve their real achievements:

No one did more, first to recognize under the mud and silt of fivecenturies, and then to bring to light, all that was fruitful, creativeand of value in our people, all that Vuk believed ought to be ourcontribution to general culture.15

Similarly, in the essays on Njegos, Andric is drawn to the poet asthe personification of an essential principle of Serbian culture.Where Vuk was the man of action, whose courage took the form ofreadiness for constant struggle against opposition to his linguisticreforms, Njegos was a thinker, embodying courage on a philosophi-cal as well as a practical level. Njegos had three functions, all ofwhich made great demands on him: he was "Vladika" of Mon-tenegro: "Prince-Bishop", at once head of the church and ruler ofthe land, as he was a poet. These three functions conflicted with eachother and led to contradictions in all aspects of Njegos's life. He hadto face the backwardness of which Vuk was aware daily in his


political plans for his country, setting out energetically, only to berebuffed ungratefully, even brutally. He was forced all the time toface the discrepancy between his surroundings and his sensitivityand intellect. Andric describes Njegos as on the one hand isolated byall that he was, and on the other caught up at the centre of thestruggle between East and West, a tragic struggle often involvingfratricide, described by Andric as "not only the conflict of twofaiths, nations and races, but of two elements".16 For Njegos theOttoman Empire was the embodiment of Evil, a Hell on earth withwhich it was his duty to struggle without hesitation or conciliationand without any hope of victory. This daily experience drove Njegosto see conflict as the essential principle of the Universe: constanteven in Heaven, where God/Light must struggle perpetually forvictory over Evil. Out of his experience grew Njegos's particularbrand of courage, expressed in the famous line from his masterpieceThe Mountain Wreath - "Let what cannot be occur!"17

It is a line so succinct as to defy translation, but one with which allSerbo-Croat speakers are brought up. Andric describes it as

a unique, desperate motto which seems absurd, but which is infact the very truth of life . . . I have not found a more terriblemotto anywhere in the poetry of the world or the destiny ofpeoples. But without this suicidal absurd, without this, to put itparadoxically, positive nihilism, without this tenacious denial ofreality and the obvious, neither action nor the very thought ofaction against evil would be possible.18

The principle which Njegos embodies for Andric, and which isexpressed in this line, is the "Kosovo principle". The defeat of theSerbian state by the Ottoman army on the field of Kosovo in 1389 isthe central fact of the oral tradition of the South Slavs. It was a defeatout of which the people forged a desperate heroism, a readiness forself-sacrifice and an unassailable belief in the future. Njegosexpresses this principle with particular intensity:

In this, Njegos is the expression of our fundamental and deepestcollective emotion, for it is under his motto, consciously orunconsciously, that all our battles for freedom have been waged,from Karad"jord"je (1805) to the present day.19


The essays concerned with Njegos evoke the essential drama of hissituation. Andric identifies himself imaginatively with his subjectand enters into his dilemma, conveying the poet's isolation, despair,frequent bitterness, and spiritual strength. There is also the ad-ditional dimension of Andric's personal admiration of the poet andhis acknowledgement of the extent to which Njegos remained a vividpresence in his mind - from his youth, when most people inVisegrad would quote lines from The Mountain Wreath in the courseof conversation, to the Second World War, when Njegos's express-ion of the traditional faith in the "impossible" was a source ofinspiration to so many.

The essays are, then, both imaginative portraits and illustrationsof the continuing meditation explored in detail in Devil's Yard.There are points of contact both with Andric's fictional works andwith the character sketches and reflections of Signs by the Roadside.The work - included in the various published volumes of Andric'sessays - which most obviously spans the categories of fact andfiction, history and legend is the "Conversation with Goya".20 Here,the author's identification with his subject is complete. The ideasattributed to Goya are in fact Andric's own reflections on the natureof art, provoked by an affinity with the painter's work. Had Andricbeen interrogated as Kamil was, he would have had to reply "I amhe".

The form of this piece, which has been used by other modernwriters, brings it closer to a work of art than an essay. Goya'sphysical appearance is described briefly with particular attention tohis hands, the bridge between the painter's physical existence andthe world of his imagination. The "conversation", like so many ofAndric's works, is set in a frame. The frame itself has twodimensions; the timelessness of a small French cafe, and thereference to a circus being set up outside it. The fact that the cafe isnear Bordeaux rather than in Spain suggests the insignificance ofman-made geographical divisions. The circus carries associations ofAndric's exploitation elsewhere of the image of a different, man-made, reality. As in other works, some of the more contentiousviews expressed in the essays are attributed to a third party, a painterfriend of Goya.

The timelessness of the setting is reinforced by the fact that the


"conversation" begins with the word "Yes". It is part of a continuingreflection without real beginning or end, only provisionally fixedhere in a form which gives it shape and permanence, while alsosuggesting the fluidity of the material itself.

Within this frame the essay makes a number of statements aboutthe nature of the artist, and the artistic technique. The fragility ofthe process of transposing human experience into art is conveyed in aseries of images:

What is this irresistible and insatiable desire to take from thedarkness of non-existence or the prison which the interconnectionof all things in life represents, to wrest from this nothingness orfrom these chains piece by piece of life and the dreams of men andto give it form, to fix it "for ever" with this brittle chalk on flimsypaper?21

The situation of the artist is described as ambiguous and oftenpainful. He is resented as suspect, concealed behind a number ofmasks. The artist's destiny "insincerity and contradiction, uncer-tainty and a constant vain endeavour to bring together things whichcannot be joined".22 The image of the circus is used to develop thetheme of the artist as illusionist, obliged to play a role in public, toconform to an identity imposed from outside. The circus is seen asthe most acceptable form of theatrical performance. The theatreitself provokes only an intense awareness of the futility of any crudeattempt to reproduce the forms of reality, rather than its essence.

Ways of avoiding this sense of "poverty and vanity" are suggestedin a long reflection on the difficulties entailed in the painting ofportraits, the need to free the individual completely from hissurroundings and the arbitrary moment, seeing at once the begin-ning and the end of his life. In a passage reminiscent of "The Bridgeon the Zepa" Goya is presented as having been tempted at first tocomment on his portraits, but to have realized that they must be leftto speak for themselves to different generations in different circum-stances as flexibly and fully as possible.

A particuarly interesting passage concerns the accusation thatGoya favoured the dark sides of life, violent or ambiguous scenes, inhis paintings. Andric maintains that all human movements are eitheraggressive or defensive. He recognizes that there can be rare


moments of pure frivolous joy, but these are balanced by themillions expressing anxiety or attack. These impulses are diluted indaily life by many tiny actions which are neutral in themselves. Butthe artist must depict a concentration of such movements in theiressential tone in order that they should be expressive and convin-cing.

The last passages of the essay move away from the narrower issuesof the artist and his craft to more general ideas seen as deriving fromthe painter's experience of life. One is the passage quoted in theintroduction to this study concerning the value of legend and fairy-tale as casting light on the true nature of human existence. Anotherdescribes the painter's initial creative impulse as springing from"fear of the thought of evil". Once Goya has controlled the idea ofdeath by painting the word "mors" in a triangular frame on the wallof his room, it acts as a kind of amulet which protects him fromirrational fear.

As in Devil's Yard, where the three separate narrators cast lightfrom different angles on the central statement, so here the fact thatthe ideas are conveyed through a "conversation" involving thenarrator, Goya, and his painter friend reinforces Goya's insistence atvarious points in the essay that there is only one "truth" and one"reality", but a number of different approaches to them. Goya isdepicted as a wise old man who has seen "everything", who knowspeople of all kinds. For him only one aspect of existence inspires awe- the world of ideas, the only true reality without which there wouldbe only nothingness. Recurrent thoughts from all Andric's workscan be seen in the final words Goya is made to speak:

Living among people, I have always wondered why everythingintellectual and spiritual in our lives is so powerless, defencelessand disjointed, so odious to societies of all times and so alien to themajority of people. And I came to this conclusion: this world is therealm of material laws and animal life, without sense or purpose,with death as the end of everything. All things spiritual andabstract in it have occurred by some accident, like shipwreckedtravellers from the civilized world finding themselves with theirclothes, machines and weapons on a distant island with a com-pletely different climate, inhabited by wild beasts and savages.


This is why all our ideas bear the strange and tragic character ofobjects salvaged from a shipwreck. They bear on themselves alsothe marks of the forgotten world from which they once sprang, thecatastrophe that has brought us here, and the constant, vain effortto adapt to the new world. For they struggle ceaselessly with thisnew world in which they find themselves, a world that is essentiallyopposed to them, and at the same time they are constantlytransforming and adapting themselves to this world. Hence the factthat every great and noble thought is a stranger and a sufferer.Hence the inevitable sadness in art and pessimism in science.23

Typically, the essay does not end with these solemn words. Itreturns to the frame of the circus, with all its associations of illusion,ambiguity and elusiveness; to a description of the narrator searchingthrough the crowd for a figure of the old man he believes heglimpsed in the distance, but this may have been merely a trick of hisimagination and the light.

'Signs by the Roadside

We have seen that even Andric's longest works are often composedof several smaller components. It is in the fixing of detail in a precisecontext that the writer excels. His natural medium seems to havebeen the short, succinct statement, which could be expanded or leftcomplete in itself. The two volumes of prose poems written duringthe First World War can be seen as marking the beginning of adialogue between Andric, the world around him, and the life of hismind, which continued until the last stages of his final illness. Thisdialogue takes the form of notes, reflections, observations, sketches,snatches of overheard dialogue, impressions from travels, thoughtson art and the nature of human existence. If the early volumes can beseen as a storehouse of themes and ideas developed in Andric's laterprose works, then this volume offers a virtually inexhaustible well-spring, only a fraction of whose material was worked into Andric'screative writings.

The collection of these notes entitled Signs by the Roadside canperhaps best be described as an intellectual diary. As may beimagined of a man who recoiled so consistently from any exposure of


his private life and thoughts, Andric was equally consistent in hisdislike of the diary as a genre, seeing it as a misguided search forpermanence. He was sceptical also about the publication of theprivate letters of the famous. In a review of Heine's letters, writtenin 1914, he states: "An unpleasant sense of the degradation ofgreatness, such as I had when reading the letters of Michelangelo; itis as unsightly as behind the wings of a stage, as a workshop; in thestudio of even the most delicate painter there is a smell of oil, paint,anxiety, etc."24 And yet it is precisely because it resembles aworkshop - a random assortment of the tools, colours, sketches,completed fragments - which reflects the artist's creative activity,that this volume is of particular interest. To use Andric's basicimage: Signs represents a bridge between the experience on variouslevels that is the material of art, and its processing in enduringworks. It is a record of this intermediate stage; its contents have beencarefully selected. It is clear, from Andric's statements about theirrelevance of biographical information to an assessment of a writer'swork, that the material Andric did record in his "intellectual diary"over the years was of a particular kind, and committed to paper inthe knowledge of its public interest. Many of Andric's notes remainunpublished, including some of his more personal statements. Thenotes he was prepared to see published, then, appeared in thisapproved selection of some six hundred pages.

There are three main thematic categories in the work, reflected inits organization: general statements on the nature of existence,human behaviour, society and history; reflections on art, and inparticular on writing; and incidental impressions and charactersketches which can frequently be seen as having inspired or beenworked into a work of fiction. There are also two shorter sections:one entitled "Sleeplessness",25 devoted to the preoccupations andmusings of the insomnia which afflicted Andric; the other, under thetitle "Eternal Calendar of the Mother Tongue",26 marks the begin-ning of a collection of personal reactions to individual words andphrases in the writer's native language, and conveys something ofthe vital fascination of language for him.

The first section, consisting of general reflections on human life, ispreceded by a piece which can form an introduction to andexplanation of the pages that follow it:


Some traditional tales are so universal that we forget when andwhere we heard or read them, and they live in us like the memoryof some experience of our own. Such a tale is the one about theyoung man who, wandering through the world, seeking hisfortune, set out along a dangerous road, not knowing where it wasleading him. In order not to lose his way, the young man carvedwith an axe in the trunks of the trees beside the road signs whichwould later show him the way back.

That young man personifies the common, eternal destiny ofmankind: on the one hand a dangerous and uncertain road, and onthe other the great human need that a man should not get lost, butfind his way in the world and leave some trace behind him. Thesigns which we leave after us will not escape the destiny ofeverything human - transience and oblivion. Perhaps they willnever be noticed at all. Perhaps no one will understand them. Butstill they are necessary, just as it is natural and necessary that weshould open our hearts and communicate with others.

If these small obscure signs do not save us from disorientationand trials of all kinds, they can make them easier, and help us atleast in so far as they convince us that, in everything we do, we arenot alone, nor the first, nor unique.27

This passage offers a succinct account of Andric's intention andmethod in his art: driven by an irrational human search forpermanence, he is drawn to the simplest parables and legends asexpressing, always in new terms, the unchanging human condition.The "signs" men leave can take many forms, from a book to anelaborately engineered bridge. The book Andric had with him inprison consoled him simply because it was a book, a sign. WhenBrother Petar awoke to find Kamil beside him in Devil's Yard, thefirst thing he noticed was a book:

The first thing he saw was a small book bound in yellow leather.An intense warm feeling of joy ran through his body; this wassomething of the lost, human, real world left far beyond thesewalls, beautiful but uncertain as a vision in a dream.28

The content of the book and its author are insignificant; just as thesign on the tree is anonymous and conveys nothing other than the


fact that someone once passed that way and made it. These smallsigns are too often obscured by "the insignificant but apparentlyimportant events" taking place around us. In Bosnian Story thisessential difference in outlook divides the French Consul Davillefrom his young assistant des Fosses:

"Oh", sighed Daville, "this Travnik and the country for hundredsof miles around are nothing but a muddy desert inhabited by twokinds of wretches: tormentors and tormented, and we unfortunatecreatures have to live among them."

"On the contrary,' said the young man, "I think there are fewareas in the world that are less barren and monotonous. You haveonly to dig down a foot or two to find graves and the remains ofpast ages. Every field here is a graveyard with several layers; onenecropolis on top of another, as the various inhabitants were bornand died over the centuries, one epoch after another, one genera-tion after another. And graveyards are evidence of life, not adesert."

"Well", as though it were an invisible fly, the consul protectedhimself from the young man's way of speaking, to which he couldnot accustom himself.

"Not only graveyards, not only graveyards! Today, as I wasriding towards Kalibunar, I saw in one place that the rain haderoded the soil under the road. To a depth of some six yards youcould see, like geological layers, one on top of the other, the tracesof former roads that had passed through this same valley . . . "29

When one uses the word "truth" of Andric's work, one mustremember that it is this kind of minimal truth: the simple fact thatothers have been here before, exposed to the same kind of torments.There are no answers to the perennial questions, but the knowledgethat others have also asked them gives us a sense of continuity whichis the only solace we can expect.

The "signs" Andric speaks of are no more than that. The bridgewhich dominates the life of Visegrad and gives it its shape is a linkbetween two worlds and two different ways of life, but that is onlythe temporal, functional level of its significance. What is stressed inThe Bridge on the Drina, as we have seen, is that the bridge is also a


symbol of the continuity of life which, for all its changes, endures.One of the obviously important features of the bridge is that it standsover running water. The running river itself - the conventionalimage of passing time - cannot convey the quality of tranquillity andstability of the bridge and the mountains. Nevertheless the notion ofthe fluctuating moods of the sea, now rough, now still - of theperpetual "ebb and flow" of life - also recurs frequently in Andric'swork.

In the following passage, Andric expresses a moment of vision. Itis an example of the kind of circumstances out of which a legendmight grow:

On one of the ramparts of the Kalemegdan fortress, I shaded myeyes from the sun with my hand and in the broad space above theshadowy ditches, full of grass, I caught sight of a whole world ofbugs and flies, cobwebs and birds. The air around me was filledwith innumerable living creatures in motion. Over the stonesunder my feet ran lizards and spiders, in the freshly dug soilbeside me larvae and worms writhed struggling with the air andlight. Then I felt how innacurate our egocentric notion is that wewalk on the earth and stand in the air as though separated bysomething, as though something separate; I felt that the truth wasthat we, with everything around us, form one sea of living beings,now storm-tossed, now calm. We do not live, we are life.Individual existence, like individual death, is only a transientillusion, two minute waves in the ocean of movement around us.And it seems to me that I have glimpsed the root of our idea ofeternal life and resurrection. Eternal life lies in the realization thatall our limitations, all states and changes, are only imaginary,inherited delusions, and resurrection lies in the discovery that wenever did live, but that, with life, we have always existed.30

Much of this collection consists of reflections on the way in whichthis experience of life is transformed into art; and the demands of theartist's commitment:

An enormous effort of the imagination is required in order for awork of art to be created. And this effort should not be estimatedonly on the basis of what is successfully realized, but also by what


did not succeed and was rejected in the course of the work andwhich will remain for ever unknown to us, readers and audience.When you think of all this, you wonder how a writer can enduresuch a vocation. How is it that the tool he uses does not explode inhis hands and kill him, instead of creating according to his will?But it seems that those who are engaged in such dangerous workare protected precisely by the fact that they live inside the events,at the very heart of the danger.31

Sometimes it is possible to trace the workings of the writer'simagination, from a brief sketch recorded in the notebooks to acomplete story. We have seen, for example, the way in which thetheme of excitement and disillusion was developed in the story aboutthe circus in The House On Its Own, and that a similar theme formedthe basis for the story "Panorama". In Signs by the Roadside onepassage records the experience which was the origin of this persistenttheme. It also describes how such memories may be brought to thesurface, and demonstrates the simple stylistic devices which trans-form a personal memory into a general statement:

Above Belgrade the sun shines as though it will never set. Butwhen it does start to go down, on these autumn days it isextinguished like a live coal in water. It seems as though it werenot only the sun that is going down, but the whole earth with it.The blue ridge of hills in the distance sinks with the sun, and thenthe great plain of Srem starts to disappear, rolled up like a paintedcanvas.

They are rolling up the carpet. The performance is over.A momentary illusion which passes without leaving a trace, like

an incomprehensible shiver down the spine.One of the greatest and most splendid sensations of my

childhood was the first circus performance I was taken to. Onlyhere too there was a moment of alarm and tears.

When they began to roll up the carpet after the first act, ofacrobats and clowns, and to prepare for the next, the child burstinto tears. He implored his elders not to allow them to roll up thebeautiful big carpet that seemed to him as spacious and brightlycoloured as the Elysian fields, and not to let the wonderful game ofthe acrobats and clowns come to an end. In vain they tried to


console him, saying that this was only the first act, that theperformance would continue and that there were still manywonderful things to come. The child wept bitterly and loudly, andcalmed down only when horses and white mules appeared withbells and blue ribbons plaited into their manes. And as, inwonder, he laughed again, the tears dried on his face.

The sun has long since set. The momentary illusion hasvanished. The familiar, motionless shapes reappear. The plaingrows dark and becomes rigid, with a sharply etched line on thehorizon. Belgrade lights up as far as the eye can see and looks likea giant's toy.32

Another example may have been the starting point for the story"Summer Holiday in the South", in which an Austrian teacher isabsorbed into the sea air:

A strong south-east wind, and still stronger huge waves, splash thelow, pebbled shore. I stand, bare-headed, on a high place. Thewaves break with a great roar in white foam around my feet,sometimes sprinkling even the top of my head. The powerfulclamour of the pebbles blends with the sound of the waves as thetide constantly shifts and sorts them, coming and going, movingthem now forwards, now backwards.

The air is saturated with sea spray, which I breathe in joyfullyas deeply as I can. In this way, perhaps, a man could betransformed into sea water, or iodine, or something stronger andmore refined, a few degrees above iodine in the scale of develop-ment and perfection.And so on and up, to complete non-existence.33

Those two passages are examples of the kind of mood or emotionthat might colour the presentation of a story or an individualcharacter. Such stories or characters can then be seen as projectionsof Andric's own moods. His prose always has a strong emotional andpsychological dimension. This is illustrated by the following pas-sage, giving a brief outline of situations for potential stories. It showsalso the writer's self-conscious observation of his work, his aware-ness of its artificiality. Like a skilful conjuror he is interested intrying out increasingly difficult tricks:


A writer who shows a certain skill and conviction in describingpeople, their actions and states of mind, begins with time to sethimself new, ever more difficult and complex tasks. As he does so,he can see what hard, almost hopeless work it is, and how fewhuman thoughts and feelings can be grasped and captured,expressed and presented. What do people feel and think atexceptional, fateful moments? How do they behave, how do theydefend or console themselves?

For instance: a young man, who had set off with the girl heloves into the mountains, wanted to pick a flower and give it to her(and demonstrate his agility, strength and devotion); he set offdown the cliff and is now falling headlong, straight into a deepchasm.

Or: a conspirator who, according to a well-thought-out plan,comes to the place where he is supposed to meet the companionswith whom he is supposed to carry out the coup d'etat and deposethe hated tyrant, but instead of his fellow-conspirators he finds thetyrant's agents, and now they are tying him up, with curses andblows, while in the corner of the large room he sees his compan-ions, who have already been bound.

Or: a man with thirty passengers in an aeroplane which hascaught fire and is falling with its own weight, from a height of tenthousand feet.

That's what you ought to be describing!34

Sometimes a scene which is complete in itself will impress itself onthe writer's imagination, to be recorded for its own sake:

They were reading together from a large book. The text was aboutlove and conflict, strife and defeat some two thousand years ago,about parting without tears or words, with no hope of beingreunited. The woman was silent, and kept turning her face to oneside. He immediately regretted that he had opened the book atthis particular page. By a sudden movement of her neck and head,he realized that she was going to cry. Then she quickly turned herhead away, but still a large tear fell on to the page of the openbook. She lowered her head more and more and turned stillfurther away. He said nothing, but sat in great confusion andembarrassment and stared uncomfortably, with a dull sense of


surprise, at the large, clear tear shot through with light on theprinted paper. The tear slowly slipped down the tilted page andthe letters under it could be seen enlarged, as under a magnifyingglass.

For a film-script.35

Most frequently, these initial ideas are recorded in the form ofcharacter sketches:

He was so clever and cunning that he was able, when he needed,to divide the simplest human word, "yes", into two syllables andso make two words which contradicted and refuted each other.But he could not do the same thing with "no". (His skill did notextend quite so far!) Consequently, he always answered allquestions with "yes", and then, if he changed his mind, he wouldset his skill into operation and begin to break the word in two,until he had made of it the "no" he needed.36

A sketch such as this one is probably based on observation of anindividual who caught the writer's attention. In a similar way he willrecord snatches of conversation overheard, or incidents observedaround him. Other sketches are generalizations which may be usedverbatim at suitable moments in the writer's work, or expanded intoa full description of a character or situation. This kind of passage isoften used to illustrate a point in a longer piece, and is introduced bya phrase such as "he was one of those people who . . .":

With people who are completely and irretrievably committed to apassion, to alcohol, cocaine or eroticism, you can observe aparticular kind of absentmindedness. They look at you andappear, more or less, to be listening to what you are saying tothem, but you see that they are lost in their own thoughts, andtheir faces have an expression as though they were carefully andanxiously listening to something in themselves, something aboutwhich they care a great deal and which only they can hear. This iswhy your questions disturb them, anger them, and this is whythey answer them briefly and vaguely. All of this means that theyare resentful, although they do not show it, and you are uncom-fortable, although you try to hide it.37


Some of these general observations are expressed in a form whichcan readily be incorporated into a work of fiction, like the observa-tion of the peasant's behaviour below. Others are abstractionswhich are complete in themselves and for which a series of jottingssuch as Signs by the Roadside is the only suitable vehicle:

When a peasant has some great family care or serious damage hasoccurred to his property, you can see how he thinks, "racks hisbrains" or grieves, as though he were performing some difficultphysical task. He sits, a little bent, sweat breaks out in beads onhis brow, he looks straight ahead and from time to time speakssemi-audible words. All this with a heavy and dignified serious-ness which townspeople and the educated do not know. It isapparent that he gives himself completely to every anxiety thatcomes upon him, and that he spends himself and toils withoutrespite until he solves it or recovers from it. But, on the otherhand, both before and afterwards, his soul is genuinely at restand does not know our unhealthy unease, our conceit and theway we taunt our imagination, spoiling our days and nights andweakening ourselves for the important efforts of life.38

As I have lived among intellectuals, I have been able to see thatevery individual really does represent a "world in himself, or atleast a state. That means roughly that everyone has his own innerlaws which take little, or as little as possible, account of the otherlaws of the world. Everyone has his own conception of the worldand life, his art or science (or religion). And not only that.Everyone has his own internal and foreign policy, his army andarmaments and his economy, and his own seas and deserts, hisjudges and murderers, his theatres and pubs and brothels.

They create and elaborate all of this in themselves, at theexpense of considerable effort, until they cut themselves off fromthe rest of the world, in complete autocracy and isolation. Thefirst part of their lives is spent in this activity, while in thesecond they try to find a way back to the world of other ordinarypeople from whom they have so successfully separated them-selves.39


These general observations may also be extended from individualsto whole people and cultures. We have noticed a number concerningthe people of Bosnia and the kind of men who characterized theOttoman administration there, the particular characteristics of theLevantines and Jews. Such observations are sometimes coloured bythe outlook of the character to whom they are attributed, but morefrequently they take the form of direct interventions by the narratorhimself. Several of the observations recorded in Signs by the Roadsideconcern the Balkan peoples in general. The following examplereflects something of Andric's personal experience of the two worldwars and the bitter conflict between national groups in Yugoslavia,openly expressed between the wars and enduring under the surfacetoday:

This nation has suffered too much from disorder, violence andinjustice, and is too used to bearing them with a muffled grumble,or else rebelling against them, according to the times and circum-stances. Our people's lives pass, bitter and empty, among mali-cious, vengeful thoughts and periodic revolts. To anything else,they are insensitive and inaccessible. One sometimes wonderswhether the spirit of the majority of the Balkan peoples has notbeen for ever poisoned and that perhaps they will never again beable to do anything other than . . . suffer violence, or inflict it.40

Related observations were prompted by the writer's travels; aconsiderable number, for example, describe his impressions ofSpain, a country which particularly appealed to him, as well as ofScandinavia, Turkey and China. Some of the most pertinent to hiswork are observations of the differences between East and West;they convey something of Andric's ambivalent attitude to bothcultures, attracted and repelled as he is by individual manifestationsof each:

It is hard to find in the East a building which is altogether fine,pure, in which nothing could be criticized. But, on the otherhand, there is not in the East a building, however dilapidated orneglected, which has not at least a foot of green garden, or afountain of running water, or just one single flower-pot withcarefully tended fuchsias or Chinese roses.


That place is the soul of the ruined house. Buildings in the Westhave nothing like it.41

In the East the earth is still raw, alive; none of its juices has driedup; it has all its energy and all its poisons.42

People in the East.They live indirectly. They progress in a roundabout way

through life, and as they go it seems that the actual progress itselfis not as important as the way of walking, what is said as theywalk, or the name that is given to the places through which theypass.43

This last passage succinctly illustrates the complete mutualincomprehension of the local Bosnian population and the Austrians,so "purposefully" involved in building roads and railways, describedin The Bridge on the Drina.

All these passages concern the material of art, "wrested", asAndric puts it, "from life - mine and yours". In the section of thevolume entitled "For the Writer", Andric comments also on themethod of art and the process of artistic creation, as well as on hisown personal view of the writer's position:

I do not think I shall ever succeed, even remotely, in expressingthe beauty of the ordinary actions, trivial events, and small joys ofeveryday life, as they are seen through some great anxiety orsorrow which momentarily obscures the world from us.

Through our boundless cares and efforts, the joys of life lookperfectly and enchantingly beautiful. And if later, when the carespass and the efforts cease, we could see these joys with the sameeyes, we would be rewarded for everything.

But we cannot.44

In books there have always been, and there are today, plenty ofuntruths, half-truths, and, above all, blank spaces; that is, placeswhich are neither truths nor half-truths but hollow, conceited


narration which says nothing, but confuses the reader and, likeweeds, smothers whatever is significant and valid in the text.Because when we have nothing to say, but nevertheless talk orwrite, we do so always, directly or indirectly, at the expense oftruth. Every truth, in order to be revealed and communicated toothers, demands a great deal of time and space, strength andpatience; it matures slowly and is not easily recognized, and thereare often difficulties and obstacles in its way; we should not thenourselves add to the burden.

Perhaps it would be better to shorten this brief note of mine, andcut it off right here.45

Style? We have always talked a great deal about it, but today Iwonder what it is. The art of clothing one's thought, communicat-ing it to others in the best and most convincing way? If I think aboutit, I feel that it could be a great deal more besides. I sometimes feelthat style, that is the actual sound of the words, the sentence and thecomposition of the whole, is also the main test of the truthcontained in a sentence.

If a wine-barrel which we tap with our index-finger crooked tellsus by the sound it makes whether it is full or empty, why should themusic of our sentence not be able to tell us something about thepresence or absence of intellectual or emotional content?

We do not discover truths but merely recall them, in moments ofclarity, and give them "stylistic expression".46

The aphoristic expression of the last sentence of this passage ischaracteristic of Andric's whole way of thinking. It is the chosenmedium of many reflective writers of his kind, from Marcus Aureliusand Pascal on; it is also of course a favoured form in oral culture.

A great many of the comments on the writer's craft express thededication which Andric has described in various works in connectionwith the "builder". The individual writer should be as anonymous asthe traditional builder. His task is not to discover truths but to set upin himself, through concentration and in solitude, the conditions inwhich he can become the vehicle for their expression in as precise aform as possible.


No matter how serious the craftsman's approach, however, he willnot always be understood. The fact that artists and their audience arefallible and often misguided human beings is one with which thewriter must also come to terms: "To be a productive, well-knownwriter means to put between yourself and others a little hill ofprinted paper and a whole mountain of inexactitude and misunder-standing."47

This brief statement, perhaps, suggests another reason whyAndric should have returned so readily to the image of the builder.An architect's intentions may sometimes be misunderstood, butstone is plainly a medium with qualities quite different from those oflanguage. Several of Andric's reflections in this section concern thenature of his material:

There was a time when I believed in words (in the value of wordsas such), swore with them, encouraged and consoled myself andothers with them, wrote them down and remembered them,accepted them with blind faith and sincere enthusiasm, andoffered them to others as gifts. And then, gradually, with time, Ibegan to realize the truth about words, to see increasingly clearlywhere they came from, how they came into being and disappearedand how they changed their form and meaning, to understandboth their temporary price and their real worth and durability.Until, finally, I realized clearly what they were: smoke andnothingness, the fruit of chance and disorder, like everything elsearound me, mere illusions, the offspring of illusions and themothers of new illusions.48

Apart from observations more or less directly related to art, itsnature, method and material, Signs by the Roadside is made up ofreflections on Andric's own life and on the human condition. Manyof these fragments are similar in tone to the early prose poems and toAndric's verse: they express the strong lyrical current of all hiswriting.

It is incredible how little we know about ourselves, the worldaround us and the life we live. Only great and unexpected joys orheavy blows and great losses can show us that human life is farricher and more complex than we imagine, that everything in it


has two sides or several sides, two meanings or many meanings,everything, from pleasure and joy to pain and disaster, from theslightest trifle to existence itself. Everything changes and repeatsitself: a man is born several times, he grows and falls in turn,recovers and falls ill; he dies several times, and is reborn; andeverything that happens to him is almost always unpredictable andtherefore apparently full of contradictions, hard to comprehendand inexplicable, and his end is lost in mist, silence andoblivion.49

Every conversation about death sobers me, disturbs me, stops mein my tracks, and I can never accept the fact that I talk about it inpassing, lightly and irresponsibly. I always think that a personought to take off his shoes when he steps into this area, to lift uphis thoughts and lower his voice, and to choose his wordscarefully, if he cannot actually remain silent.

This respect for our departure from the world has nothing to dowith the bogeyman death represents for us, but springs, on thecontrary, from life itself and my great love for it.50

Freedom, true freedom is a dream, a dream which, more oftenthan not, is not destined to come true, but anyone who has notonce dreamed it is pitiable.51

Many of the later fragments concern Andric's reflections on theprocess of ageing and the distinctive features of youth and age:

Many of the great and fateful passions of our youth are founded ona simple misunderstanding. We are like an awkward, clumsyperson who goes into a shop, points to something in the windowand says in the tone of one who is ready for anything: "I'll takethat and pay whatever you ask."

And afterwards, afterwards when it is all too late, you see thatyou went into the wrong shop and asked for something you didnot need and which you never actually wanted.52


Once not only every word, but every sound was accompanied forme by a whole procession of emotional and intellectual associa-tions. Now that no longer happens. Sounds are isolated, andwords weak, so that people have to repeat them; and that does nothelp at all.

And it would all be bearable if I were not tormented by thethought, clear and exact in itself, that all these associations stillexist and live around me, but I do not feel or hear them. And allthis beauty, inaudible to me, is heard by others, gathered andcarried home, like armfuls of flowers.53

It is only to be expected that this volume should include referencesto the most characteristic aspects of Andric's response to the world -silence and solitude:

At the worst moments, when the din around me is at its peak,when the last traces of reason and kindness are obscured and whenevery word and grimace expresses only evil and misdirectedimpulses, then, with a desperate movement of my mind, likelightning, I demolish the whole world, erase and consign tooblivion everything down to the last trace of existence. Over allthat men have done and said, inexpressibly terrible things, nowvanished and buried for ever, silence reigns, not the dead, facelesssilence of human habitations, but a great silence from outer space,a new world, built entirely of silence, a wondrous Jerusalem, aholy city, magnificent and enduring. Blocks of silence, arches andcorners of silence, shadows and patches of light on the buildingsand, as far as the eye can see, a new world for those who have beendefeated in this one, a paradise which remains after the materialworld has burnt itself out in the form which we see and touchevery day and which poisons and crushes us each instant.54

Whoever succeeds in penetrating silence and calling it by its truename, has achieved the most that a mortal being can achieve. It isthen no longer cold nor dumb, nor empty nor terrible, but itserves him and comes to his aid in every adversity, as in thetraditional song where the hero caught a fairy by her hair andmade her his blood sister and bound her to him for ever. Whoever


succeeds in warming solitude and bringing it to life, has con-quered the world.55

To make an adequate selection from this varied material in a shortspace is difficult, and to make any relevant comment on Andric'sown succinct statements is still more so. As Andric himself has putit:

Words seem so "eloquent" while they stand alone, innocent andunused; if one or another of them fails, the third will speak forboth of them and say much more than that. They are linked in amagic ring dance through which the rhythm of the whole runs; ifone of them is lame, clumsy or weary, the others drag it along withthem, so that its faltering is not noticed, and the dance goesfaultlessly on.

It is more difficult when you have to use words to say somethingabout words themselves and the way they are used in story-telling.Then they are suddenly dumb, cold, and they lie like dead stones,as though they had never spoken, danced or sung. When they dealwith words, words are silent, while they can always say some-thing, sometimes more, sometimes less, about everything elseconnected with man. Even about silence.56

In this volume, as in all Andric's works, everything is provisional.The enduring impression it leaves is that it offers glimpses of"truths" which are immediately questioned or denied in a subse-quent piece. Typically, Andric warns himself and his readers againstthe simplistic truths apparently offered by the attractive aphoristicform which so appealed to him:

The aphorism as a form represents an imperceptible danger for allof us. At first sight the aphorism appears to be a neat and pleasingform which enables us best and with the least effort to present ourlife experience, which we always feel is hard and important, and todemonstrate our intelligence, of which we usually have the highestopinion. But we are generally badly mistaken. An aphorism is thinice on to which we are led by our desire to show cheaply andquickly what we know and what we can do. It is a mirror in whichwe catch the people and the world around us, without noticing


that at the same time we are ourselves caught and reflected in it,with all our motives and intentions.57

Fluctuation of mood is, then, the one constant aspect of Andric'sthinking. But, for all his awareness of fear and suffering as theessential features of the human condition, a positive acceptance oflife at this price is nevertheless the dominant tone of his writing. Thefollowing piece may serve as a commentary on his work as a whole,but the irony of its mock-heroic tone should warn us against takingeven it too seriously:

Let me, for a moment or two, appear only and solely as a poet oftransience, let me be its herald, the one who escorts it and sees iton its way.

You who love life - and who does not really love it at heart? - donot recoil from this poem of mine; it is not the enemy of life, butits friend, its whisper and its music which accompanies the flow oflife's sap like the murmuring of water.

The music of transience, that is the voice of what once was,what is and what will be again somewhere and for someone, it iswhat endures amidst eternal disappearance. Only people who lovelife can hear and record the soft melody of transience. Do notinterrupt or deny it, and do not try to outshout it. Listencarefully! It is nothing but the hymn of life of which we knowneither the beginning nor the end, into which no one invited us,which no one gave us, and which we must sooner or later leave,although we do not know when, why or where we go.

Do not recoil from this song!Transience, that is the only aspect of permanence accessible to

us, for whatever does not pass is dead or unborn. Transience is lifeitself, our most potent experience of life. It is in fact - ourselves.58

In his work Andric always avoided a sense of things being neatlycompleted, an impression that with one individual's death, or theend of one historical era, a part of life was ended. There is always asense of life continuing. This perspective also characterizes several ofthe writer's last reflections, inspired by his approaching death:

If costly life and many stormy years have taught us nothing else,they have taught us one thing: to part. Without words, without


trembling, without blinking, with dry eyes, steady hands. If I amtrue to myself, the last thing I can do in your honour is to partfrom you too like that, light, dear name, for in you is all good andall beauty, and you deserve every effort and sacrifice. Anyone whodoes not know how to endure the pain of parting has not trulyloved the light of the world!

Farewell! I say, or rather, I think, for I have no one to say it to,nor is there anyone to hear me, and the light goes on like a riverwhich has dried up at its source but still the water goes on flowing.Farewell! And the light drains away in silence, for sound too hasdied out, the companion which so often goes with you. It isdisappearing. It remains only in my eyes. Farewell! There will belight. There will be other eyes.59

7

Conclusion

Andric is a complex writer, and his works have generated a mass ofcritical writing both in Yugoslavia and internationally. Some of hisallegiances to other twentieth-century European writers have beentouched on here, and the main concern of this account of his workshas been to stress the universal nature of their subject matter andtreatment, despite the remote, "exotic" setting of many of them.Nevertheless, in attempting to identify some of the major features ofAndric's fiction it seems appropriate to start from what was one ofthe most fruitful areas of his own cultural heritage, notably the oraltradition.

Ivo Andric was born into a milieu in which the oral epic traditionwas still a vital force. He was therefore from the outset aware firstlyof the function of this kind of artistic expression, and secondly of thediscrepancy between the worlds of epic and daily life. These twoaspects of the process of human creativity remained a source ofinspiration throughout Andric's work.

The South Slav epic tradition offers a clear example of the rawfunction of the artistic process. Many of the heroic songs, and amongthem some of the finest, are above all a means of coming to termswith history. They look back over the period of Turkish rule, to thegreat battle of Kosovo which marked its beginning, and to theindependence lost in 1389. From the scant facts known about themedieval states, from defeat and the centuries of compromise andsurvival which followed it, the songs have created a pattern whichnot only provides a sense of order, but gives it meaning. The yearsbefore Kosovo are seen as containing seeds of downfall in the greedand self-interest of medieval rulers, so that the defeat is notaltogether imposed from outside but becomes also a lesson in

Conclusion 235

humility and patriarchal values. The account of the battle itself istransformed into a story of heroism and self-sacrifice based on aconscious choice of death for the sake of the eternal values of the"kingdom of Heaven" which continues to have resonance today, andwhich has been an unquestioned source of inspiration in times ofwar. In the process of transforming historical events into a story withform and meaning several kinds of stylization are employed. One ofthese is the liberty of the singer to move freely in time and space, totake historical figures from different centuries and put them togetherregardless of the facts of history. Another is the use of stock phrases,formulae and whole set pieces which can grant the songs the formaldignity of ritual. An extension of these is the archetype. We haveseen that in the various songs concerned with building projects, forexample, the master-builder is always called "Rade". It is as thoughthere were only one immortal embodiment of the principle ofdedicated craftsmanship, capable of being summoned freely throughtime and space in the manner of the pagan gods with their specificfunctions. This is a feature of the heroic age, of the people's refusalto be dependent on many benefactors. More than this, however, theuniversal craftsman - the builder, the painter, the writer - becomesone of the central characters in his fiction. This figure is just one ofmany ideas which the writer absorbed from his heritage, and whichaffected his whole understanding of the function of art and severalimportant aspects of his procedure.

Andric's early stories tend to focus on single characters whofunction as archetypes because of either their personality or thesituation they are in. These are characters about whom it would bepossible for a group of tales or songs to grow up because they arefelt to embody some fundamental aspect of the human condition.Examples would be Mustafa the Hungarian, representing a manbrutalized by his experience of war, or Mara the concubine, whosestory gives an account of the stoic acceptance by women of the factthat they will be used and abused by men. Several of Andric'scharacters do indeed recur in a small cycle of stories, bringing aparticular flavour to the tales in which they appear. One couldperhaps even see Andric's tendency to formulate general ob-servations: "He was one of those people who . . .", "It was one ofthose marriages which . . .", as being related to the epic poetry's


concern with widespread patterns of behaviour and recurrentinsights.

In addition, the technique of oral composition has affectedAndric's narrative procedure. Such devices as the use of repetitionand symbol are among the major features of his craft.

As well as the heroic songs, the South Slav oral tradition containsfolk stories notable for their humour and their unselfconsciousintroduction of supernatural elements into mundane situations. Allthis affected the anecdotes and stories which were so marked afeature of the Bosnian life of Andric's youth. In "The Tale of theVizier's Elephant" Andric describes the "most unbelievable" ofthese stories as being the ones "which tell you most about the placeand the people". In other words, Andric grew up with the idea thatto be successful, indeed to be "true" in the sense of containingmeaning, a story need not necessarily be "believable" in anyaccepted sense. In the same passage, Andric describes the tales ofBosnia as "Oriental lies which the Turkish proverb maintains are'truer than any truth'". The notion of "truthfulness" in art is, then,one which engaged Andric's attention from the first. It is involved inconsiderations both of content and of the nature of the artisticprocess. For any human experience, whether factual or purelyimaginative, once it has been given form, acquires a "reality" apartfrom material existence and "superior" to it in so far as it continuesto have relevance in many different circumstances. From oneperspective, experience becomes "real" only when it is given shapeand significance by being recorded in some form.

This idea is implicit in much of Andric's work. One form it takesis the need for characters to give the experience they cannototherwise control a formula which will not explain it, but will at leastgive it shape, some reality outside themselves. The story "ThePeople of Osatica" is based on the need for public recognition of anact before it may be seen as real. Because of general denial, the maincharacter comes to doubt whether his one moment of courage, themost intense experience of his life, ever actually occurred. Thesetting of the story reinforces its atmosphere of ambiguity.

"Facts", "truth", "reality" are then highly questionable butpowerful imaginative concepts in the work of Andric. A passage inSigns by the Roadside expresses his attitude clearly:

Conclusion 237

A fact. What is that? The furthest point we can see, the limit ofour human understanding. And nothing more. What we call a factis merely an imaginary point on the edge of our field of vision,with which we seek to affirm and confine reality and our exist-ence.1

Facts and surface reality may be misleading or simply devoid ofmeaning. Andric's work is dedicated to a search, not for any truthwhich could be expressed in ordinary speech, but for an understand-ing of the ways in which perceptions may be seen as "true" or thecircumstances in which a "meaning" may be felt to be revealed.

We may then perhaps identify four related areas inherited fromAndric's cultural background. The first would be a fascination withthe discrepancy between material existence and the life of the mind,the imagination. The oral tradition, and particularly the heroicsongs, are clearly not concerned with the facts of day-to-day life, butwith the human need for order and meaning. In The Bridge on theDrina the hero Alija -Derzelez is worshiped by the Moslem boys inVisegrad and is a source of wonder and inspiration for the adults whobelieve in his return to earth in time of need. This belief, expressinga deeply-rooted need for heroes and leadership, can take on a literalreality, as can be seen in an incident in the First World War in whichSerbian soldiers defied their officer's order not to attack a town andjustified their action by maintaining that they had been led on by thegreat folk hero Prince Marko on his piebald horse. There is of courselittle connection between the historical figure of Marko and hisresonance in the popular mind. In Andric's story of Alija -Derzelez,this discrepancy is brought vividly alive. He himself is incapable ofinspiring the legends about him; they have become attached to him,more or less arbitrarily, from outside. Similarly, in The Bridge on theDrina the character of Radisav, who sabotages the building of thebridge, becomes a complex study of a man engaged in blind butsublime subversive activities. He is entirely dedicated and preparedto sacrifice his life for his cause. His protest is misguided in thatnothing can prevent the building of the bridge, which will bringprosperity and many benefits to his native town. The exact nature ofRadisav's cause is forgotten by later generations, but he is remem-


bered and revered as a hero because of his defiance. His examplewill be recalled whenever the community requires exceptionalcourage, and his memory contributes to the townspeople's own senseof self-respect. In both these cases, then, there is an obviousdiscrepancy between what these men were in their historical cir-cumstances and the way they survive in the minds of the people.

The second area is closely related to this, and concerns Andric'sinterest in points of contact between historical events and the waythey are received and interpreted. For example, the French andAustrian consuls and the Turkish Vizier in Travnik are seen inBosnian Story to react in different ways to the same events. Moreparticularly, the consuls are seen actively "processing" these eventsin their conversations with others, their official reports and privatewritings. It is clear that Andric himself lived through a period ofcomprehensive official mythologization of recent history, and his ageabounds in examples of the "processing" of history on both a publicand an individual level.

This is perhaps why many instances of the exploitation of mythand legend in history are of such significance in Andric's work. Oneof the clearest is the way Radisav in The Bridge on the Drina is able tomake use of the existence of a theme from South Slav traditional oralpoetry to account for his sabotage of the building of the bridge. Theusefulness of such a legend to a man engaged in subversion can beclearly seen from the fact that his explanation is readily accepted bythe townspeople, who need not believe it to be literally true. Asimilar level of irrational belief must have been responsible for theSerbian soldiers' vision of Prince Marko and their defiance of ordersin his name. The existence of this kind of belief is impossible for theauthorities to counteract, as it cannot be argued or explained away.By the same token, of course, the "reality" of generally acceptedmyths may be exploited by those in authority, just as new "myths"may be invented.

The third area of interest is the stylization of the world of art,which marks it off clearly from the material world. In his essay onart, "Conversation with Goya", Andric writes:

We create forms, like a second order of nature, we arrest youth,we retain a glance which in "nature" would have changed or

Conclusion 239

vanished a moment later, we seize and separate lightning move-ments which no one would ever have seen and we leave them withtheir mysterious meaning to the eyes of future generations. Notonly that - we reinforce each of these movements and glances by aline or a tone. This is not exaggerated or deceitful and it does notalter fundamentally what we show, but lives alongside it like animperceptible but constant proof that this object has been re-created to a more enduring, more significant life, and that thismiracle has occurred within us, ourselves.2

The world of art is, then, a separate order of reality, and anydiscussion of the "truth" of art must first clearly acknowledge itsartificiality. Andric pursues this idea in the story "Panorama". Theimage of the world of art used here, a crude mechanical device,contains no mystery. There is no question of illusion, the photo-graphs do not evoke mysterious worlds of make-believe; on thecontrary: they are real places. And yet, seated in front of them, thechild lives fully in the world of his imagination. When he emerges,the real streets of Sarajevo seem to him like a "bad dream". Nor doesthe child people these pictures with wild and impossible adventures;he relates them closely to his own experience, so that his delight isfirmly rooted in his own control of the stories he creates and hisinvolvement in them. The nature of the image used for thisreflection on the world of the imagination is suggestive. Althoughthe events and experiences the narrator describes as occurring to thecharacters in his mind are not radically different from those ofpeople in life, on the one hand they are contained within theframework of the photograph and thereby lent a formal completion,and on the other the artificiality is never lost from view; there isnever any confusion between the two worlds. The framework of thephotographs and the Panorama, then, maintains the observer'sawareness that this is a world not radically different from the one welive in, not superior or inferior, but separate, distinguishable by thefact that it exists in the mind. It is, in other words an image whichsuggests awareness of its own artificiality, which does in fact give it akind of mystery, inviting one to think not only of the story's content,but also of the reason for a man's wishing to tell it.

Closely connected with this idea is the sense of excitement a work


of art may arouse. Andric has described his own excitement as achild at the mere sight of a book, regardless of what its content mightbe. This emotion occurs again in Devil's Yard, when Brother Petarawakes to see a book beside him: "A strong, warm feeling of joy ranthrough his whole body." This excitement stems partly from the factthat the work of art is outside time, fixed in an enduring frame, andpartly from the idea that a work of art may contain some of themeaning men seek in vain in their daily lives. To return to the heroicsongs, which have influenced Andric both directly and uncon-sciously: they contain a sense of their endurance through time, theirmany separate performances, the layers of meaning they haveacquired. This gives them a density which communicates, apartfrom the sense of the individual song, a suggestion of the importancethey have for the singers and audience alike. There is a sense ofmagic about the ritual performance of the heroic songs. If they havesurvived their reception by numerous different audiences, this mustbe because in all their various transformations, they retain a hint ofthat "truth", found in legend and fairy-tale, which communciatesmost about the nature of human existence. The ritualized form ofthe performance, like the physical presence of the book, creates asense of anticipation that the song may contain a message ofimportance within its clear confines and stylized form.

These are features of Andric's work inherited from his culturalbackground, and they are reflected in his enduring interest in thepoints of contact and divergence between the material world and thatof the imagination. We can look at some of these ideas in theircollective manifestation in myth and legend, and in individualobsessions and illusions.

Andric does not make a clear distinction between the concepts of"legend" and "myth". In "Conversation with Goya" he refers to the"few fundamental legends of humanity". In Devil's Yard he speaksof the ancient "story" of the rivalry of two brothers. It is at the levelof irrational recognition of a familiar and valid pattern, and thecapacity of the individual to experience the truth they contain as partof himself, that these stories acquire the value of myth. This canperhaps be seen as the remotest stage, when the communicativevalidity of the story has been assured by time. Andric is concerned

Conclusion 241

with the starting point of the legend, its point of contact withday-to-day reality.

While legends are in the main attached to individuals from theoutside, as we have seen, the character of Omer Pasha Latas offersan example of a man who deliberately sets out to create a legendabout himself. Omer is described as someone who never "really"lived, because his life and behaviour were all in the service of animage of himself. The child Mico Latas, like many other children, isacutely aware of the discrepancy between the mundane demands ofhis everyday life and the great life of adventure which he feels it"ought" to be. For him the life he is forced to live is unreal,meaningless; he feels compelled to escape from it, in search of thatother "true" life elsewhere. As a young child, he is already preparedto deny his surroundings in favour of a fiction. By simply giving hiscows different, grander names, he makes them into something morethan they are. His dream of heroic action is embodied in a songwhose outcome depends on treason. Unlike most other childrenMico Latas is able, at least apparently, to realize his dream. Hechanges his destined way of life absolutely, changing his nationalityand his religion and taking a name which has no connection with hisformer life, but which comes to spread fear throughout the Ottomanworld. From one point of view, Omer Pasha's life can be seen asbeing lived in terms of an illusion of a superior "reality" which hepursues to the exclusion of all contact with actuality. He requiresconstant confirmation of the impression he makes on others, for hehas lost touch with any sense of himself apart from that impression.He adapts his facial expression and tone of voice to the needs of eachsituation as he perceives them, making himself quite unpredictableand untrustworthy, and at the same time insecure if the reaction heprovokes in others is not what he expects or intends. The elusivenessof the "real" Omer Pasha is, however, of consequence only inencounters between him and another individual. The power hewields over others publicly is real enough. This power is in thenature of things transient, and his endeavour to have it immortalizedin a painting which would continue to inspire future generationswith awe is seen even by Omer himself to be illusory. The "reality"of his power is further undermined in the scene in which he isdescribed as entering Sarajevo with his magnficent retinue. The awe


the townspeople experience soon wears off in the manner of theimage which dominates this novel, that of alcoholic intoxication.Nevertheless, within these limits and with the connivance of thepeople, Omer's power has "reality" and he is able to build a legendabout himself in his lifetime. There is a crucial distinction inAndric's work, however, between this "negative" legend, whichinspires fear, and a "positive" legend such as the stories told aboutthe naive, blustering Alija, which may inspire real heroism on manylevels.

There are numerous examples in Andric's work of individualswho are subject to obsessions and illusions of various kinds. OmerPasha's invention of an identity for himself and projection of it on toothers is an extreme example, but his endeavour is echoed in milderform in many other characters. In fact, virtually all Andric'scharacters who are given to introspection are beset by a sense of theelusive quality of their own identity and the discrepancy betweentheir idea of themselves and the world around them, or the way theyare perceived by others. The only characters who avoid this sense ofinsecurity and unease are those who are wholeheartedly involved inactivities outside themselves. These may be characters with a clearlydefined role which seems fully to express their personality, such asMadame Daville in Bosnian Story, absorbed in domestic life, or theFranciscan doctor Brother Luka, similarly absorbed in identifyingand tapping the positive forces of health and recovery. The existenceof these fully "positive" characters, in fact, distinguishes Andric'sfiction from much twentieth-century writing.

In the early stories, an obsession which dominates a character'slife is seen to be the result of circumstances, of experiences tooshocking or painful to be assimilated. In many stories Andricexplores the impact of such experience on children, showing them tobe particularly vulnerable to the strong irrational currents of humanexistence. The child has not matured emotionally to the point wherehe can make sense of these currents by accepting patterns laid downby adults. The balanced adult will simply ignore information whichdoes not fit into the patterns he expects, while the child is susceptibleto all the conflicting aspects of reality, and cannot reconcile them. Aslong as the child's experiences are not too extreme, he will grow intosuch a balanced adult. However, if an adult is subjected to experi-

Conclusion 243

ences too extreme to be assimilated, the balance of his or her mindwill be upset, dominated by one aspect of reality which blocks out allelse. It is typical of the ambiguity of Andric's artistic world thatthese characters - such as Mustafa the Hungarian, Mara theconcubine, the Priest Vujadin, Anika, and others - should representat once a distorted view of reality and at the same time a "privileged"clarity of vision which allows them insight into some fundamental"truth".

Andric is particularly interested in the arbitrary but rigid linedrawn by society between "sanity" and "madness". One character'sbehaviour may be inexplicable to the outside world because of afailure to acknowledge the reality of psychological pressures whichcannot be externally observed but which can be more devastating intheir effect than any material circumstances. This is the theme ofseveral of Andric's later stories. One of the main impulses behind hisinvestigation of this theme must have been his experience of thesudden eruption of irrational behaviour through the "civilized"exterior of social life in both the world wars. For such behaviour tobe possible, it must be assumed that the rational basis of social life ishighly questionable. The one developed image of social organizationin Andric's work is the world of the prison in Devil's Yard, orderedby the arbitrary rule of the governor, Karagoz. There is noidentifiable pattern to his behaviour, and yet it is dictated by his owndesperate search for some kind of order.

Andric, then, explores the tenuous hold of individuals on notionsof rationality and sanity in order to account for private experience ofthe human condition and, by extension, to explore the irrationalbasis of all forms of social organization.

The writer emphasizes the elusive and arbitrary nature of thedividing line people feel they must place between notions of "fact"and "fantasy", "reality" and "illusion" by refusing to make suchdistinctions. The world of the mind, fluctuations of mood, are as"real" as any other aspect of human experience. Thus in "SummerHoliday in the South" the "evaporation" of the main character isdescribed in matter-of-fact terms. A more elaborate symbol is to befound in the story "Jelena, the Woman Who Was Not". Jelenastands for a complex of ideas of beauty, joy, companionship,tenderness and perfect peace of mind. She appears to the narrator


only on sun-filled days and is often associated with the anticipation,excitement and sense of altered perspective of travel:

Above all the vision is connected with the sun and its progress. (Icall it a "vision" because of you to whom I am relating this, formyself it would be both comic and insulting to call what is mygreatest reality by that name, which, in fact, means nothing.)3

Jelena's appearances in the story that bears her name in no wayinterrupt the narrative; they are as "real" as the suitcases in thenarrator's hotel room or the shop filled with people in which he seesher paying the cashier.

She is, then, more real than reality, a symbol of the state of elation- "zanos" - which is a marked feature of many of Andric'scharacters. This "zanos" is a complex concept. It may be eitherpositive, as in "Jelena, the Woman Who Was Not", or negative, asin the amoral illusory world of Omer Pasha Latas. In its negativeform, this "elation" or "state of being carried away" is often acollective emotion. It is seen, for instance, to overwhelm the peopleof Travnik like an irresistible organic force. This is the kind ofcollective madness manifested in riot and war. In Omer Pasha Latasthe state is described in terms of "intoxication". Negative "zanos"is narcissistic, barren, destructive, while its positive manifestationis creative. The concept conveys at the same time an absolutelyunattainable illusion - such as the capacity to become a part ofthe sea air, or a vision of perfect beauty - and an instant of vividperception. It is the moment when a character may perceive withabsolute clarity the nature of his relationship with the Almighty,or the "true" nature of human existence. But what is crucial andcharacteristic of the ambiguous quality of Andric's work is that thismoment of perception, which plays such a central role in his writing,should be seen as either essentially illusory or fundamentallytrue according to the perspective of the observer. The conclusionmust be that it is both., simultaneously. That is, any perception of"truth" is illusory, and at the same time it is "true" if it containsmeaning.

It is just such provisional truth, an irrational recognition ofmeaning, which may be conveyed by art.

The notion of a coincidence of ideas in the moment of elation is

Conclusion 245

crucial. At such a moment there is no attempt at analysis orunderstanding. The moment is one of intuition, harmony and thereconciliation of opposites. These are the elements involved also inmoments of artistic truth. For a work of art to communicate, as inthe case of myth, there must be an act of recognition, a leap of theimagination which involves both the identification of the artist withhis material and that of the audience with both. A vivid image of thistemporary identity of creator, material and audience in the momentof creation is provided, of course, by the performance of traditionaloral literature with which Andric was so familiar.

The absolute involvement of the artist in his material is an ideawhich runs through several of Andric's works. The House On ItsOwn is an illustration of the activity of story-telling in a reflectiveframework in which the narrator describes the necessity of creatingin himself a vacuum into which characters and situations will comeunbidden. The terms in which the right state of mind are describedare reminiscent of the passive concentration which characterizes thepractice of meditation. The problem of the relationship between"fact" and "fantasy" is unequivocally solved in this introduction inthe artist's acknowledgement of the superiority of the world of theimagination.

Devil's Yard can similarly be read as a reflection on the artisticprocess, exploring the extent to which "I" can and should be"another", and particularly the circumstances in which artist andaudience become identical with "another" in mythic recognition andin art.

The identification of the audience with the material must, ulti-mately, remain an act of faith, but Andric has written at length notabout his own work, but about the process of writing in general. Hemakes much of the ultimate mystery of the process, the idea that onecan never really know what makes a sentence or a detail ring true andaffect all the writing around it, lifting it out of the everyday and intoa different order of conviction. He employs similar language in hisdescription of the craftsman, who carries, as we have seen, associa-tions with Rade, the Master-Builder of the heroic songs. Thecraftsman is not subject to any doubt about the definition of "truth"and "illusion", "fact" and "fantasy". He is completely involved inhis activity as he works.


The craftsman and the artist are, however, rarely privilegedbeings. Their sense of harmonious involvement in their work, andtheir consequent creative elation, are a gift. The positive form ofelation is bestowed on those committed to creative action outsidethemselves. As Andric's work progresses, his characters are seen asnot content to be the passive subjects of sudden visitations of elation.Increasingly, they are driven to seek such moments consciously.Inevitably, since this search springs from a self-centred, narcissisticneed, it is doomed. The House On Its Own is peopled with characterswhose lives are framed more or less entirely in illusion. The illusionthese characters pursue in one way or another - and frequently, as inOmer Pasha Latas, through recourse to alcohol - is perceived asescape. By definition it implies a sense of constraint which drivesthem to seek a "way out":

The first sips of alcohol and the first notes of music tell them thatthese hills around the city are not so insurmountable or soimpenetrable as they appear even on the most beautiful sunnyday, and particularly in the evening when the shadows lengthenand the mists descend. You are surprised that you never noticed itbefore. You see clearly: flower-lined roads lead out of Sarajevo inall directions, and every step on them is a new source of joybecause it is all leading you out of this land and this town. Whereto? Anywhere, only somewhere into a land of order and light,intelligible actions and open, human words. And where is that?Where is there such a land? If you think for a moment and stop toremember, you realize that there is no such land, there cannot be.And yet, it exists. It is created by this life among these mountains,under these conditions. It is that land which - is not this one.4

The striving expressed in this passage is self-centred and essen-tially short-lived. It is barren, leading nowhere other than toindividual disappointment and resentment when the moment passes.Yet it is superficially similar to its mirror-image of positive release.What is crucial is the motivation behind the striving, whether it isselfish or contains the idea of the insignificance of the individual, hisabsorption into something beyond himself.

One of the images which has been particularly fruitful in Andric'swork is that of the prison. This is the image, of course, which shapes

Conclusion 247

his most concentrated work, Devil's Yard. It is a simplification tosuggest that Andric sees the world as a prison from which theindividual must yearn to escape. Such Neo-Romantic notions wereindeed present in his earliest works. The idea of captivity andconstraint elaborated in Devil's Yard and elsewhere is more complex.At its centre, it implies the notion of escape which is embodied inAndric's opposing image of the bridge.

A passage from the "essay" entitled "Bridges" expresses the ideawith characteristic force:

Finally, everything which expresses this life of ours - thoughts,endeavours, glances, smiles, words, sighs - all of it is strivingtowards another shore, to which it is directed as to its aim. All of ithas something to overcome and to bridge: disorder, death ormeaninglessness. For, everything is a transition, a bridge, theends of which are lost in nothingness, beside which all earthlybridges are merely children's toys, pale symbols. And all our hopelies on the other side.5

This "other side" should not be thought of as another "world",but simply as "what is not this". That is to say, what is not fear,pain, anxiety, guilt, unanswered and unanswerable questions, asense of incompleteness which seeks constantly to be resolved.

Art may temporarily convey the satisfaction of a sense of com-pleteness, and offer existence a "meaning" which cannot otherwisebe found in human experience. Such an apparent resolution is ofcourse illusory. But it can communicate a sense of excitement andhope, and can appear to hold a mysterious power. In his workAndric never loses sight of this sense of excitement and he strives toevoke a similar kind of excitement in his reader, not by any externalcomment but by containing the mystery within the material of thework itself, and by reminding the reader always of the artificiality ofthe medium.

Apart from the central image of the bridge, the passage quotedabove contains the idea that all the various manifestations of lifeembody and express something more comprehensive than them-selves. Andric's works are precisely documented, detailed andconcrete. He avoids analysis and abstraction at all costs. He makesfull use of his native Bosnia and the details of its history to convey a


wealth of ideas which derive their strength from the complexity oftheir context. Thus, for example, Andric writes most extensively ofthe period of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. This enables himto convey ideas about the vanity of earthly power, arbitrary rule andoppression, without having to make any direct statement. The clashof cultures at the centre of his work is similarly fruitful of ideaswithout external comment. The psychological and emotional statesof Andric's characters are described in terms of their experience ofthe material world. Their fears are not abstract, they spring from thesituations in which they find themselves and become an integral partof their perception of the behaviour of others. Similarly, in allAndric's accounts of confrontation of various kinds, the power andvulnerability of the respective characters are conveyed in terms oftheir physical attributes, their movements and gestures.

Andric's narrative procedure suggests that the universal implica-tions of a scene or a portrait are "trapped", "imprisoned" within theconcrete details of the material world, but that they may be releasedthrough art. The theme of the exile or imprisonment of ideas recursin Andric's work, and is most explicitly treated in "Conversationwith Goya" and "The Bridge on the Zepa".

No one can escape the immutable laws of the world in which weare irrevocably confined, and yet this world itself creates the idea ofits opposite, to which we strive constantly, seeking to bridge the gulfbetween them. It is clear from the passage quoted above that the ideaof freedom is conditioned by the constraints imposed by humanexistence and produced by the imagination. This provides anadequate image of the creative freedom of the artist whose ideas arebound within the material world and conditioned by it.

Devil's Yard is an embodiment of this idea: creative story-telling ina prison. The form builds up an impression of taut, controlledresponse to deliberate pressure which finds its release at its physicalcentre, a release which is highly ambiguous. The central character inthis work "becomes" the historical figure of Gem, the younger son ofSultan Bayazid, whose life he has been studying. He begins to tellGem's story in the first person. This identification illustrates the vitaland mysterious "leap of the imagination" involved in the creation ofworks of art and the response of their audience.

It is that recognition of a familiar or meaningful pattern that

Conclusion 249

characterizes legend, and it offers an illustration of "mythicidentification". The central idea is not in fact a statement but aquestion in the form of an exclamation about the nature of theconcept "I". Kamil is asked by his interrogators to account for hisuse of the word "I" in speaking of the suspect character of thesixteenth-century pretender. But identity is essentially elusive,depending to a great extent on other people's interpretation of anindividual's words. No man can give a full and entirely truthfulaccount of himself. He lives in a world of formlessness, flux andillusion. The only way he may begin to understand his own situationand haltingly express it to others is by recognizing similarities withthe situation of other human beings through time and space.

Throughout his work, Andric undermines anything that appearsto be an unequivocal statement by emphasizing the relativity of allthings, the vital importance of perspective. The same town may beseen to be both on a hill and in a hollow. Facts are an illusion, andthe illusions by which men live their lives are no less "real" than so-called "facts". Devil's Yard makes its central observation inparenthesis at the core of an intricately structured work. This mayand does appear to give it strength. But Andric is careful to avoidgiving the work any appearance of being an absolute statement. Inmany of his works he will have the story told through a secondnarrator, reducing the emphasis on the tale itself by focusing also onits teller. Or he will end a story not with the death of the protagonistbut with the new individual who comes to take his or her place in thecommunity. In Devil's Yard the central story of the pretender Gem isplaced in a series of interlocking frames, each representing adifferent narrator.

The outermost frame is the clearly defined, formal one of thewindow of a monastery cell through which a young monk is looking atthe grave of Brother Petar, who told such wonderful tales of hisimprisonment in Devil's Yard in Istanbul. Snow is falling steadily andcovering the freshly-dug earth and the path made by the funeral party.

In the endless white and shapeless emptiness which represents thepassing of time in this outer frame, all that has survived is the storyof a story in the mind of a man. In its categorical statement - "Andthis is the end. There is nothing else" - the epilogue conveys to usthe importance, as well as the fragility, of that survival.

Notes

Chapter 1 Introduction

1 Robert Munro, Rambles and Studies in Bosnia-Herzegovina andDalmatia (Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1895), p. 14.

2 Arthur Evans, Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot(Longman, London, 1876), pp. 240-1.

3 Quoted by Vasko Ivanovic, Pitanja nece biti (Politika14.iii.1975).

4 Razgovor sa Gojom (Sabrana dela, Belgrade 1981, vol. 12;Istorija i legenda, pp. 24-5). All references are to this edition ofthe collected works.

5 "O prici i pricanju" (vol.12; Istorija i legenda, pp. 68-70).6 "U cutanju je sigurnost".7 "Most na Zepi" (vol.6; Zdf, pp. 192-3).8 Kazivanja o Andricu, ed. Radovan Popovic (Sloboda, Belgrade,

1976), p. 171.9 "Ledenjak, kojem su devet desetina stalno u mraku."

10 Kazivanja o Andricu, p. 76.11 Quoted by Stevan Stanic, Borba, 7.x. 1972.12 Staze, volume 10 of collected works, pp. 17-19.13 Quoted by Radovan Popovic, "Zivotopis", Delatnost i dokumenti

(Zaduzbina Ive Andrica u Beogradu, 1980), pp. 67-8.14 "To si ti napisao? Sta ti to treba?". Quoted by Gvozden Jovanic,

Kazivanja o Andricu, p. 61.15 Popovic, op. cit., p. 71.16 Hrvatska mlada lirika (ed. Ljubo Wiesner, Zagreb, 1914),

p. 147.17 Quoted by Miroslav Karaulac, Rani Andric (Prosveta & Svjet-

lost, Belgrade and Sarajevo, 1980), p. 72.18 Karaulac, op. cit., p. 75.

Notes 251

19 Ibid., p. 75.20 Ibid., p. 75.21 Popovic, op. tit., p. 73.22 -Derzelez u hanu (Knjizevni jug, Zagreb, no.3, 1918, pp. 83-7).23 Karaulac, op. cit., p. 94.24 Popovic, op. a'f., p. 74.25 Ibid., p. 74.26 Knjizevni jug, no. 8, 1919, p. 367.27 Karaulac, op. cit., pp. 98-9.; Popovic, op. cit., p. 76.28 Popovic, op. cit., p. 76.29 Karaulac, op. cit., p. 99.30 Znakovi pored puta, p. 103.31 Ibid., p. 547.32 Popovic, op. cit., p. 79.33 Ibid.34 7hW., p. 83.35 Ibid., p. 85.35 Ibid., p. 85.36 Ibid., p. 87.37 Ibid., p.94.38 Znakovi pored puta, p. 111.39 Popovic, o/>. cir., pp. 97-8.40 "Pogledao sam se od glave do pete i video da spasavam samo

sebe i svoj 'iberziger' . . ."41 Popovic, op. cit., pp. 98-9.42 Kazivanja o Andricu, p. 112.43 Popovic, op. cit., p. 112.44 Ibid., p. 118.45 Kazivanja o Andricu, p. 59.46 "Kako sam ulazio u svet knjige i knjizevnosti", vol. 10, p. 36.47 Ibid., p. 37.48 Ibid., pp. 42-3.49 Na Drini cuprija (vol. 1), p. 284.50 Quoted by Adamovic, Kazivanja o Andricu, p. 15.51 Milan Budmir, Ivo Andric i antika, Ivo Andric, special publica-

tions vol. 1 (Institut za teoriju knjizevnosti i umetnosti, Bel-grade, 1962), pp. 235-41; Branimir Zivojinovic: Ivo Andric inemacka knjizevnost, (ibid.), pp. 243-65; Olga Moskovljevic:


Andric i skandinavske knjizevnosti (ibid.}, pp. 301-5; RadoslavJosimovic: Andric i Francuska (ibid.}, pp. 307-16; Eros Sekvi:Andric, Italija i Italijani (ibid.}, pp. 287-300.

52 Quoted by D. Adamovic, "Nenapravljeni intervju saAndricem", NIN, 29.X.1961, p. 3.

53 Quoted by D. Adamovic, Kazivanja o Andricu, pp. 12-16.54 Na Drini cuprija, pp. 290-1.55 Pijemont, 1915, in Predrag Palavestra, Knjizevnost mlade Bosne

(Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1965), vol. II, p. 249.56 Na Drini cuprija, pp. 266-8.57 Popovic, op. cit., p. 69.58 'TricaizJapana",Afcm*n(vol.ll), pp. 104-6.59 Quoted by Vasko Ivanovic, op. cit.60 "Vino", Staze, lica, predeli (vol. 10), p. 20.61 "Pesnik Ivo Andric govori nasim citaocima", Ideje, 17.xi. 1934,

p. 2.

Chapter 2 Verse

1 Ex Ponto (vol. 11), p. 78.2 Adamovic, op. cit.3 Ex Ponto, published by Knjizevni jug (Zagreb, 1918), p. 9.4 Ex Ponto (vol. 11), p. 32.5 Ibid., p. 9.6 Ibid., p. 18.7 Ibid., p. 9.8 Ibid., p. 43.9 Ibid., p. 43.

10 Ibid., p. 68.11 Ibid., p. 47.12 Ibid., p. 28.13 Ibid., pp. 13-14.14 Ibid., p. 20.15 Ibid., p. 79.16 Nemiri(vol 11), p. 88.17 Ibid., p.U2.18 Ibid., pp. 109-10.19 Ibid., p. 111.

Notes 253

20 Ibid., p. 137.21 Ibid., p. 215.22 Ibid., p. 221.23 Ibid., p. 241.24 /iw/., p. 257.

ChapterS Short Stories

1 "Put AlijeDerzeleza", Znakovi (vol. 8), pp. 9-34. The first partof the trilogy, "Derzelez u harm" (Derzelez at the Inn) appearedfirst in Knjizevnijug, Zagreb, no. 3, 1918, pp. 83-7; "Derzelezna putu" (Derzelez on the Road) the following year. Thecompete story was first published in Belgrade, in 1920.

2 "Put AlijeDerzeleza", p. 10.3 Ibid., p. 11.4 Ibid., pp. 10-11.5 Ibid., p.W.5 Ibid., p. 30.6 "Mustafa Madzar" (first published 1923), Nemirna godina

(vol.5), pp. 23-40.7 Ibid., pp. 28-9.8 "Za logoravanja" (1922). Nemirna godina, pp. 9-22.9 "Trup" (1937), Zed (vol. 6), pp. 105-17.

10 Ibid., p. 108.11 /&«/., p. 111.12 Ibid., p. 107.13 Ibid., p. 112.14 7ta*.,p. 116.15 "Mara milosnica" (1926), Jelena, zena -koje nema (vol. 7),

pp. 91-176.16 Ibid., p. 97.17 "Anikina vremena" (1931), Jelena, zena koje nema, pp. 9-90.18 Ibid., p. 73.19 "Smrt u Sinanovoj tekiji" (1924), Zed (vol. 6), pp. 199-211.20 Ibid., p. 206.21 "U musafirhani" (1923), ZeS, pp. 9-20.22 Ibid., p. 11.23 Ibid., p. 19.


24 "Proba" (1954), 2e&, pp. 73-104; p. 93.25 "Rod kazana" (1930), ZeS, pp. 53-94.26 Ibid., p. 54.27 Ibid., p. 58.v28 "Corkan i Svabica" (1921), Jelena, zena koje nema (vol. 7),

pp. 185-201.29 "Mila i Prelac" (1924), Deca (vol. 9), pp. 25-119.30 Ibid., p. 30.31 Ibid., p. 32.32 "Cudo u Olovu" (1926). Zed~ (vol. 6), pp. 165-73).33 "Jelena, zena koje nema" (1934) (vol. 7), pp. 245-79.34 Ex Ponto (vol. 11), p. 63.35 "Rzavski bregovi" (1924), Zet (vol. 6), pp. 153-66.36 "Most na Zepi" (1925), Zed, pp. 185-94.37 "Prica o kmetu Simanu" (1948), Znakovi (vol. 8), pp. 143-70.38 "Zeko" (1948), Nemirna godina (vol. 5), pp. 225-344.39 "Bife Titanik"' (1950), Nemirna godina, pp. 189-224.40 Ibid., p. 189.41 Ibid., p. 205.42 Ibid., p. 205.43 "Pismo iz 1920. godine" (1946), Deca (vol. 9), pp. 171-86.44 Ibid., p. 181.45 Ibid., pp. 182-3.46 Ibid., pp. 184-5.47 "Zlostavljanje" (1946), Znakovi (vol. 8), pp. 111-42.48 Ibid., p. 111.49 Ibid., p. 112.50 Ibid., p. 113.51 Ibid., p. 114.52 Ibid., p. 114.53 Ibid., pp. 115-16.54 Ibid., p. 119.55 Ibid., p. 130.56 Ibid., p. 140.57 "Red" (1954), Znakovi (vol. 8), pp. 81-8.58 "Osaticani" (1958), Znakovi, pp. 289-328.59 Ibid., pp. 290-1.60 Ibid., p. 298

Notes 255

61 "U zavadi sa svetom" (1958), Deca (vol. 9), pp. 17-24.62 Ibid., p. 17.63 "Panorama" (1958), Deca, pp. 119-49.64 7foW.,p. 122.65 /ftu/. p. 123.66 Ibid., p. 125.67 Ibid., p. 126.68 Ibid., p. 133.69 /too1., p. 137.70 Ibid., p. 138.71 Ibid., p. 149.72 "Letovanje na jugu" (1959) Zed" (vol. 6), pp. 247-256.73 Ibid., p. 248.74 Ibid., p. 253.75 "Zena od slonove kosti" (1922), Jelena, zena koje nema (vol. 7),

pp. 233-8.76 "Aska i vuk" (1953), Deca (vol. 9), pp. 187-96.77 Ibid., p. 193.78 "Prica o vezirovom slonu" (1947), Nemirna godina (vol. 5),

pp. 41-90.79 Ibid., p. 41.80 Ibid., p. 72.82 Kuca na osami (1976), (vol. 14).83 "Lica" (1960), Kuca na osami, pp. 226-33.84 Ibid., p. 226.85 Kuca na osami, p. 10.86 Ibid., p. 10.87 Ibid., pp. 10-11.88 Ibid., pp. 11-12.89 "Baron", /Cwca na osami, p. 39.90 Ibid., p. 38.91 7foW., p. 43.92 Kuca na osami, p. 80.93 "Robinja", Kuca na osami, p. 92.94 "Bonvalpasa", Kuca na osami, p. 17.95 "Alipasa", Kuca na osami, p. 23.96 Ibid., p. 32.97 "Cirkus", Kuca na osami, p. 23.


96 Ibid., p. 32.97 "Cirkus", Kuca na osami, pp. 55-76.98 Ibid., p. 59.99 Ibid., p. 61.

100 Ibid., p. 69.101 "Geometar i Julka", Kuca na osami, p. 47.102 "Prica", Kuca na osami, pp. 81-90.103 Ibid., p. 81.104 Ibid., p. 82.105 Ibid., p. 86.

Chapter 4 The Novels

1 Na Drini cuprija (Belgrade, 1945). Collected works, vol. 1.2 Omerpasa Latas (Belgrade, 1976). Vol. 15.3 "Razgovor sa Gojom", Istorija i legenda (vol. 12), p. 17.4 Travnicka hronika (Belgrade, 1945). Vol. 2.5 Gospofaca (Belgrade, 1945). Vol. 3.6 Na Drini cuprija, p. 10.7 Ibid., p. 11.8 Ibid., p. 12.9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 27.11 Ibid., p. 25.12 Ibid., p. 123.13 Ibid., p. 133.14 Ibid., p. 86.15 Ibid., p. 86.16 /taf.,p. 89.17 Ibid., p. 94.18 Ibid., pp. 146-7.19 7hW., pp. 257-8.20 Ibid., p. 165.21 Ibid., p. 173.22 Ibid., pp. 113-14.23 /fcu/., p. 94.24 Ibid., p. 396.25 For details of the documents used see Ante Kadic, "The French

Notes 257

in 'The Chronicle of Travnik' ('Bosnian Story')" in FromCroatian Renaissance to Yugoslav Socialism (Mouton, TheHague, 1969), pp. 154-91.

26 Travnicka hronika, p. 13.27 Ibid., p. 516.28 Ibid., p. 152.29 "An ancient primeval lament".30 Ibid., p. 173.31 Ibid., p. 31.32 Ibid., p. 169.33 Ibid., p. 446.34 Ibid., p. 37.35 Ibid., p. 37.36 Ibid., pp. 225-6.37 Ibid., p. 285.38 Ibid., p. 512.39 Ibid., p. 96.40 Ibid., p. 17.41 7foW.,p. 113.42 Ibid., p. 114.43 7Wd., p. 78.44 Ibid., p. 496.45 Ibid., p. 109.46 Ibid., pp. 114-15.47 7te/.,p. 159.48 Ibid., p. 26.49 Ibid., pp. 43-4.50 7WJ., pp. 279-80.51 Ibid., pp. 314-17.52 Ibid., p. 503.53 Ibid., p. 505.54 Ibid., pp. 261-2.55 Ibid., pp. 317-18.56 Gospoitica, p. 62.57 Ibid., pp. 99-100.58 7hW.,p. 17.59 7hW., p. 33.60 7fcu/., p. 229.


61 Ibid., p. 18.62 Ibid., p. 20.63 Ibid., p. 18.64 7ta?.,p. 19.65 Ibid., p. 20.66 Ibid., p. 35.67 7fod.,pp. 79-80.68 Ibid., p. 241.69 Omerpasa Latas, vol. 15 (Belgrade, 1977).70 "Mladic u povorci" (Zivot, Sarajevo, no. 17, 1954).71 Omerpasa Latas, p. 16.72 Ibid., p. 40.73 Ibid., p. 45.74 Ibid., p. 78.75 Ibid., pp. 50-1.76 Ibid., pp. 152-3.77 Ibid., p. 153.78 7Zm*.,p. 278.79 Ibid., p. 279.80 7fcuf.,p. 103.81 Ibid., p. 164.82 Ibid., pp. 164-5.83 Ibid., p. 253.84 76u/., p. 253.85 Ibid., p. 141.86 Ibid., p. 170.87 7Wd.,p. 273.88 Ibid., p. 290.89 76u/.,p. 289.90 Ibid., p. 290.91 Ibid., p. 296.

Chapter 5 Devil's Yard

1 Prokleta avlija (Novi Sad, 1954). Collected works, vol. 4.2 "Trup", Zetf (vol. 6), p. 105.3 Prokleta avlija, p. 11.4 Ibid., p. 54.

Notes 259

5 Ibid., p. 9.6 Ibid., p. 121.7 /*trf.8 "Sunce" (1952); "U celiji broj 115" (1960).9 Prokleta avlija, p. 15.

10 7taf.,p. 12.11 Ibid., p. 15.12 Ibid., p. 24.13 /tod., p. 35.14 Ibid., p. 36.15 Ibid., p. 41.16 Ibid., p. 46.17 /tod., p. 53.18 Ibid., pp. 58-9.19 Ibid., p. 62.20 /tod., p. 100.21 Ibid., p. 77.22 Ibid., pp. 95-6.23 Ibid., p. 95.24 Ibid., p. 59.25 Ibid., p. 92.26 /tod., p. 93.27 Ibid., pp. 44-5.28 Ibid., p. 47.29 Ibid., p. 115.30 Ibid.31 /tod., p. 116.

Chapter 6 Essays and Reflective Prose

1 "A. G. Matos" (Wfor, Zagreb, no.5, 1914). Collected works,vol. 13, Umetnik i njegovo delo, pp. 196-200.

2 Umetnik i njegovo delo, p. 199.3 Ibid., p. 200.4 "Walt Whitman (1819-1919)" Knjizevni jug, Zagreb, no. 2-3,

1914). Collected works, vol. 12, Istorija i legenda, pp. 75-83.5 Istorija i legenda, p. 75.


6 "Legenda o Sv. Francisku iz Asizija" (Srpski knjizevni glasnik,no. 4, 1926). Istorija i legenda, pp. 84-93.

7 "Legenda o Lauri i Petrarki" (Srpski knjizevni glasnik, no. 5,1927). Istorija i legenda, pp. 96-105.

8 "Simon Bolivar Oslobodilac" (Srpski knjizevni glasnik, nos. 1 &2, 1930). Istorija i legenda, pp. 118-43.

9 Istorija i legenda, p. 118.10 Istorija i legenda, p. 84.11 Ibid., p. 97.12 "O Vuku kao piscu" (Nasa knjizevnos.t, Belgrade, no. 2, 1946).

Umetnik i njegovo delo, pp. 78-91.13 Umetnik i njegovo delo, p. 83.14 Ibid., p. 88.15 "Vukov primer" (Politika, Belgrade, 14.ix.1947). Umetnik i

njegovo delo, p. 108.16 "Njegos kao tragicni junak kosovske misli" (Kolarcev narodni

univerzitet, Belgrade, 1935, 22pp). Umetnik i njegovo delo,p. 16.

17 "Neka bude sto biti ne moze!", Gorski vijenac.18 Umetnik i njegovo delo, p. 16.19 Ibid., p. 16.20 "Razgovor sa Gojom" (Srpski knjizevni glasnik, no. 1, 1935).

Istorija i legenda, pp. 11-30.21 Istorija i legenda, p. 15.22 Ibid., p. 14.23 Ibid., pp. 28-9.24 "Heine u pismima" (Hrvatska rijec, 25.vi. 1914). Istorija i

legenda, pp. 159-64. See p. 159.25 "Nesanica" (Znakovi pored puta, pp. 581-592).26 "Veciti kalendar maternjeg jezika" (Znakovi pored puta,

pp. 599-602).27 Znakovi pored puta, p. 11.28 Prokleta avlija, p. 45.29 Travnicka hronika, pp. 141-2.30 Znakovi pored puta,, p. 199.31 Ibid., p. 224.32 Ibid., pp. 342-3.33 Ibid., p. 509.

Notes 261

34 Ibid., pp. 286-7.35 Ibid., p. 383.36 Ibid., p. 578.37 76u/., p. 388.38 Ibid., p. 354.39 7fctt/.,p. 290.40 /Wrf., p. 200.41 Ibid., p. 351.42 Ibid., p. 353.43 Ibid., p. 494.44 7&tW., p. 226.45 Ibid., pp. 292-3.46 Ibid., p. 293.47 7Wtf., p. 247.48 Ibid., p. 294.49 Ibid., pp. 174-5.50 Ibid., pp. 161-2.51 7Wtf., p. 72.52 Ibid., p. 64.53 Ibid., p. 282.54 Ibid., p. 21.55 7Wtf.,p. 41.56 Ibid., p. 288.57 7Wtf., p. 296.58 Ibid., p. 183.59 Ibid., p. 217.

Chapter? Conclusion

1 Znakovi pored puta, p. 162.2 "Razgovor sa Gojom", Istorija i legenda, pp. 15-16.3 "Jelena, zena koje nema" (vol. 7), p. 246.4 Omerpasa Latas, pp. 63-4.5 "Mostovi", Staze, lica, predeli (vol. 10), pp. 15-16.

Select Bibliography

Collected works

There have been several editions since the first in ten volumes in 1963,all largely following the pattern agreed with Andric himself. Allreferences in this study are to the 1981 edition, and the contents ofeach of its sixteen volumes are listed here. There was a further editionpublished in 1982 by Svjetlost, Sarajevo and Mladost, Zagreb, edited,like the 1981 edition, by Vera Stojic, Petar Dzadzic, Muharem Pervicand Radovan Vuckovic. This edition includes some new material andan additional volume (17): Sveske (Notebooks), consisting of selec-tions from Andric's notebooks and Radovan Popovic's Biography ofAndric. At the time of publication of the present study, a new CriticalEdition of Andric's works was in preparation by the Serbian Academyof Sciences and Arts, Belgrade.

Vol. 1: Na Drini cuprija (The Bridge on the Drina)Vol. 2: Travnicka hronika (Bosnian Story)Vol. 3: Gospoltica (The Woman from Sarajevo)Vol. 4: Prokkta avlija (Devil's Yard)Vol. 5: Nemirna godina (Uneasy Year) (stories)

(Za logoravanja, Mustafa Madzar, Prica o verzirovomslonu, Nemirna godina, San Bega Karcica, Veletovci,Cilim, Svadba, Strajk u tkaonici cilima, Razaranja, Bife"Titanik", Zeko)

Vol. 6: Zef (Thirst) (Stories)(U musafirhani, U zindanu, Ispovijed, Kod kazana, Napast,Proba, U vodenici, Sala u Samsarinom hanu, Casa, Trup,Rzavski bregovi, Cudo u Olovu, Zed", Most na Zepi, Smrt uSinanovoj tekiji, Olujaci, Na drugi dan Bozica, Na sta-dionu, Na drzavnom imanju, Letovanje na jugu)


Vol. 7: Jelena, zena koje nema (Jelena, the Woman Who Was Not)(stories) (Anikina vremena, Mara milosnica, Ljubav ukasabi, Corkan i Svabica, Zena na kamenu, Igra, Zena odslonove kosti, Bajron u Sintri, Jelena, zena koje nema)

Vol. 8 Znakovi (Signs) (stories)(Put Alije -Derzeleza, Dan u Rimu, Znakovi, Svecanost,•Dorde -Dortfevic, Reci, Autobiografija, Na ladl, Zlostavl-janja, Prica o kmetu Simanu, Snopici, San i Java podGrabicem, Prica o soli, Kosa, Noc u Alhambri, Lov natetreba, Razgovori, Susedi, Setnja, Zatvorena vrata, Por-odicna slika, Osaticani, Praznicno jutro)

Vol. 9: Deca (Children) (stories)(Kula, U zavadi sa svetom, Mila i Prelac, Panorama, Deca,Prozor, Knjiga, Na obali, Zmija, Izlet, Ekskurzija, Pismoiz 1920. godine, Aska i vuk)

Vol. 10 Staze, lica, predeli (Paths, Faces, Lancscapes) (sketches)(Staze, Pisma iz Krakova, Zanos i stradanja Tome Galusa,Prvi dan u splitskoj tamnici, Isukusenje u celiji broj 38, Uceliji 115, Sunce, Na suncanoj strani, San o gradu, Vino,Moj prvi susret sa delom Maksima Gorkog, Kako samulazio u svet knjige i knjizevnosti, Jedan pogled na Sar-ajevo, Na jevrejskom groblju u Sarajevu, Biblioteka nasanasusna, Na vest da je Brusa pogorela, U ulici Danila Ilica,Ucitelj Ljubomir, Likovi, U Sopenovoj rodnoj kuci, Lica,Susret u Kini, Kroz Austriju, Prvi dan u radosnom gradu,Portugal, zelena zemlja, Leteci nad morem, Mostovi,Spanska stvarnost i prvi koraci u njoj, Na Nevskom pros-pektu, Utisci iz Staljingrada, Predeli, Na kamenu, uPocitelju, Kraj svetlog ohridskog jezera, Napomena)

Vol. 11: Ex Ponto, Nemiri, Lirika (Verse)Vol. 12: Istorija i legenda (History and Legend) (essays)Vol. 13: Umetnik i njegovo delo (The Artist and his Work) (essays)Vol. 14: Znakovi pored puta (Signs by the Roadside)Vol. 15: Kuca na osami (The House On Its Own)Vol. 16: Omerpasa Latas (Omer Pasha Latas)


Selected critical works

Bandic, Milos, Ivo Andric: zagonetka vedrihe (Matica srpska, NoviSad, 1963).

Dzadzic, Petar, Ivo Andric (Nolit, Belgrade, 1957).O Prokletoj avliji (Prosveta, Belgrade, 1975).

Karaulac, Miroslav, Rani Andric (Prosveta, Belgrade, Svjetlost,Sarajevo, 1980).

Korac, Stanko, Andricevi romani Hi svijet bez boga (Prosvjeta,Zagreb, 1970).

Leovac, Slavko, Pripovedac Ivo Andric (Matica srpska, Novi Sad,1979).

Milosevic, Nikola, Andric i Krleza kao antipodi (Slovo ljubve,Belgrade, 1975).

Palavestra, Predrag, Skriveni pesnik (Slovo ljubve, Belgrade, 1981).Stanojcic, Zivojin, Jezik i stil Iva Andrica (Filoloski fakultet beog-

radskog univerziteta, Belgrade, 1967).Tartalja, Ivo, Pripovedaceva estetika (Nolit, Belgrade, 1979).Vuckovic, Radovan, Velika sinteza o Ivi Andricu (Svjetlost, Sarajevo,

1974).

OTHER LANGUAGES

Marabini, Claudio, "La Narrativa di Ivo Andric" (Nuova antologia dilettere, arti e scienze, vol. 499, 1967, pp. 474-90).

Minde, Regina, Ivo Andric. Studien uber seine Erzdhlkunst (VerlagOtto Sagner, Munich, 1962).

Petrovic Njegos, M., Ivo Andric, L'homme et I'oeuvre (Les EditionsLemeac Inc., Ottawa, 1969).

Collections of critical articles

Delo Ive Andrica u kontekstu evropske knjizevnosti i kulture (ZaduzbinaIve Andrica, Belgrade, 1981).

Ivo Andric, ed. Vojislav -Duric (Institut za teoriju knjizevnosti iumetnosti, Belgrade, 1962).

Ivo Andric u svjetlu kritike, ed. Branko Milanovic (Svjetlost, Sar-ajevo, 1977).


Kriticari o Andricu, ed. Petar Dzadzic (Nolit, Belgrade, 1962).Svecani skup u cast Akademika Ive Andrica (Srpska akademija nauka i

umjetnosti Belgrade, 1962).Zbornik radova o Ivi Andricu, ed. Antonije Isakovic (SANU, Bel-

grade.

English-language works

TRANSLATIONS

The Bridge on the Drina, translated by Lovett Edwards (George Allenand Unwin, London, 2nd edn 1961) (New American Library,NY, 1960).

Bosnian Story, translated by Kenneth Johnstone (Lincolns Prager,London, 2nd edn, 1961).

Devil's Yard, translated by Kenneth Johnstone (John Calder,London, 1964) (Grove Press, New York, 1962).

Bosnian Chronicle, translated by Joseph Hitrec (Alfred Knopf, NewYork, 1963).

The Woman from Sarajevo, translated by Joseph Hitrec (Calder andBoyars, London, 1965). (Knopf, NY, 1965).

"The Zepa Bridge", translated by L. Vidakovic (Slavonic Review, 5,14, 1926, pp. 398-405).

"Gjerzelez at the Inn", translated by N. P. Jopson, (Slavonic andEast European Review, London, XVIII, 40, 1935, pp. 13-19).

"Gjerzelez at the Gypsy Fair", translated by N. P. Jopson (SEER,XIV, 42, 1936, pp. 556-63).

"Thirst" (Kenyan Review, Gambier, 28, 1966).The Vizier's Elephant. Three Novellas. (The Vizier's Elephant,

Anika's Times, Zeko), translated by Drenka Willen (HarcourtBrace and World, Inc., New York, 1962).

"Death of a Simple Giant" and other Modern Yugoslav Stories(Includes The Story of a Bridge (Most na Zepi), Miracle at Olovo,Neighbors, translated by Michael Scammell) (The VanguardPress, Inc., New York, 1965).

Yugoslav Short Stories, translated by Svetozar Koljevic (Includes TheClimbers (Osaticani) and The Bridge on the Zepa) (OUP, TheWorld's Classics, London, New York, Toronto, 1966).


The Pasha's Concubine and other tales, translated by Joseph Hitrec(Alfred Knopf, NY, 1968). (The Bridge on the Zepa, The Journeyof All -Derzelez, Confession, By the brandy still, MustaphaMagyar, In the camp, The pasha's concubine, Thirst, The snake,The scythe, Woman on the rock, Bar Titanic, A summer hi thesouth).

CRITICAL ARTICLES

Eekman, Thomas, "The later stories of Ivo Andric" (The Slavonicand East European Review, vol. XLVIII, 112, pp. 341-56).

Goy, E.D., "The work of Ivo Andric" (The Slavonic and EastEuropean Review, London, 1963, vol. XLI, 97, pp. 301-26).

Hawkesworth, E.G., "Ivo Andric's unobtrusive narrative techniquewith special reference to 'Kuca na osami'" (Annali IstitutioOrientale di Napoli, 1979, 20-1, pp. 131-53).

Kadic, Ante, "The French in 'The Chronicle of Travnik'" (Califor-nia Slavic Studies, University of California Press, vol. 1, 1960,pp. 134-69).

Lord, Albert, "Ivo Andric in English Translation" (American Slavicand East European Review, Philadelphia, 1964, vol. 23, 3,pp. 563-73).

Mihailovich, Vasa, "The Basic World View in the Short Stories ofIvo Andric" (The Slavic and East European Journal., 1966, X,pp. 173-7)."The reception of the works of Andric in the English-speakingworld" (Southeastern Europe, 9, pp. 19-25).

Pribic, Nikola, "Ivo Andric and his Historical Novel The Bridge onthe Drina'" (The Florida State University Papers, 1969, vol. 3,pp. 77-80).

Taranovski-Johnson, V., "Bosnia demythologized. Character andmotivation in Ivo Andric's stories 'Mara milosnica' and 'O starim imladim Pamukovicima'" (Die Welt der Slaven, 1981, 25,pp. 98-108); "Ivo Andric's 'Kuca na osami': Memories andGhosts of the writer's past" (Fiction and Drama in EasternEurope, Slavica, Columbus, Ohio 1980, pp. 239-50).


Bibliography

Ivo Andric. Bibliografija dela, prevoda i literature, 1911-1970 (SrpskaAkademija Nauka i Umetnosti, Belgrade, 1974).

Coote, M.P., "Narrative and narrative structure in Ivo Andric's'Devil's Yard'" (Slavic and East European Journal, Madison, 21,1977).

Djilas, M., "Remembering Ivo Andric" (Encounter 50, February1978, pp. 48-51).

Drazic, M., "Ivo Andric, the bard of Bosnia" (Books Abroad, 36,1962).

Fazia, A., "Nobel Prize, 1962, and The Bridge on the Drina'revisited" (Books Abroad, 37, 1963).

Ferguson, A., "Public and private worlds in Travnik chronicle'"(Modern Language Review, Cambridge, 70, 1975).

Gaster, B., "Nobel prizeman: Ivo Andric" (Contemporary Review,London 1962).

Juricic, Z.B., "Andric's vision of women in 'Ex Ponto'" (Slavic andEast European Journal, Madison, 23, 1979).

Kragalott, J., "Turkish loanwords as an element of Ivo Andric'sliterary style in 'Na Drini cuprija'" (Balkanistica, Cambridge,Mass., 2, 1975).

Loud, J., "Between two worlds: Andric the storyteller" (Review ofNational Literatures, New York, 5, 1, 1974).

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Index

Alaupovic, Tugomir, 14,18,19,21,22,28

'Anika's Times', 79-91Anxieties, 18, 52, 58-62, 85,194;

'Story from Japan', 48-9'Aska and the Wolf, 108

Babic, Milica, 29, 30'Beside the Brandy Still', 84Bosnia, 1-10,13,16, 31,44, 59,69,

70,94-6,108-9,145-6,156,164,173,180-2,225; as microcosm,148-50

Bosnian Story, 9,24,28, 83,124,142-62,174-5,188,194,218-19,238,242

The Bridge on theDrina, 13,28, 36,39,42,43-6, 85, 88, 89,123,124-42,143,144,194,226, 237,238

'The Bridge on the Zepa', 9-10,88-90,100,213,248

bridges, as symbol, 1,9-10, 50,64,89,125,126-7,132,139-42,218-19; origin of, 137-8

Camus, Albert, 7, 37Conrad, Joseph, 37'Corkan and the German Girl',

85-6Crnjanski, Milos,19

'Death in Sinan's Tekke', 79-80Devil's Yard, 50, 54, 111, 120,184,

189-205,217,240,243,245,247-9

Diplomatic Service, 20ff., 27doctoral thesis, 23

East/West, 1, 3-4, 76, 82-3,88,113,131,136-7,197-8,211,225-6; in Bosnian Story, 142ff.,164,176-9

ExPonto, 18, 51-8,194

'Faces', 111First World War, prison, 15ff.,

52-3, 54,63,193-4; internmentin Ovcarevo, 16-17; and 'YoungBosnia', 42ff.; Sarajevo, 1914,165,166

Franciscans in Bosnia, 17, 59,148;Brother Julian, 148; BrotherLuka, 160-1,242; BrotherMarko, 69, 81-4; Brother Petar,75-7,80,87,121,189ff., 240

Goethe, 7, 33Goya, 8,24; 'Conversation with

Goya', 5-6, 212-15,238,240,248

The House On Its Own, 111-22,220,245,246; 'Alipasha', 118-19;

270 Index

'Baron Dorn', 115-17; The Nobel Prize, 20,29-30, 34; speech,Circus', 119-20; The Slave Girl', 6-8117-18; The Story', 120-2

Omer Pasha Latas, 173-88,241-2,244,246

oral traditional literature, 8, 34, 38,39,111,127-30,234-8

'In the Guest House', 81-4

James, Henry, 37'Jelena, the Woman Who Was Not',

87-8 107 243-4 'Panorama, 103-6,108,239

The Journey of AlijaBerzelez', 17, 'Paths'> 1 !-1319 70-3 237 The People of Osauca, 101-2,236

Kafka, 36Karadzic, Vuk, 38,209-10Kierkegaard, 14,33,36-7,40

'Persecution', 97-9

The Rzav Hills', 88

legend, 8,13, 36, 37, 38-9,71,79,

Second World War, 25-8,90-4,96Signs by the Roadside, 20-1,24,174,

188,215-33,236-790,106,208-9,240-1; mDevil's strindberg, 14, 36,46Yard, 201-3; in The Bridge on the <Summer Holiday in the South',Drina, 125-30

'Letter from the Year 1920', 94-6Literary South, 17lyricism, verse, 63-7; in prose

107,221,243

works, 68-9,106,107,108,207-8,243-4; in Signs by theRoadside, 215-33

The Tale of the Peasant Siman', 90The Tale of the Vizier's Elephant',

108-11,236The Titanic Bar', 91-3,94Torso', 75-7,189

Mann, Thomas, 33, 36, 37 Vojnovic, Ivo, 17,18,19'Mara the Concubine', 77-8, 81,235Marcus Aurelius, 33, 50MatoS, Antun Gustav, 207-8'Miracle at Olovo', 86-7'Mustafa the Hungarian', 73-5,81,

209,235

New Croatian Lyric Verse, 15Nietzsche, 36,37Njegos, 38,209-12

The Woman from Sarajevo, 28,124,162-73

'Words', 100-1

Young Bosnia movement, 41ff.;literary activity, 46, 51,207;Gavrilo Princip, 43,47

'Zeko', 91

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