Ivo Andrić
Ivo Andrić (
Serbian Cyrillic:
Иво Андрић;
October 9,
1892–
March 13,
1975) was a novelist,
short story writer, and the
1961 winner of the
Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels
Bridge on the Drina and
Bosnian Chronicle / The Days of the Consuls dealt with life in
Bosnia under
Ottoman Empire.
Andrić was born of Croatian parentage on
October 9,
1892, in the village of
Dolac near
Travnik,
Bosnia, then part of
Austria-Hungary and today part of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Originally named Ivan, he became known by the
diminutive Ivo. When Andrić was two years old, his father died. Because his mother was too poor to support him, he was raised by his mother's family in the eastern Bosnian town of
Višegrad on the river
Drina. There he saw the Ottoman Bridge, later made famous in the novel
The Bridge on the Drina.
Andrić attended
Sarajevo's gymnasium and later studied at the universities in
Zagreb,
Vienna,
Krakow and
Graz. Because of his political activities, Andrić was imprisoned by the Austrian government during
World War I (first in
Maribor and later in the
Doboj detention camp) alongside civilian
Serbs and pro-Serb southern
Slavs.
Under the newly-formed
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia) Andrić became a
civil servant, first in the Ministry of Faiths and then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he pursued a successful diplomatic career, as Deputy Foreign Minister and later Ambassador to Germany. Ivo greatly opposed the movement of
Stjepan Radić, the president of the
Croatian Peasant Party, at ocasions calling the people that support him as
fools that follow the footsteps of a blind dog. His ambassadorship ended in
1941 after the German invasion of Yugoslavia. During
World War II, Andrić lived quietly in
Belgrade, completing the three of his most famous novels which were published in
1945, including
The Bridge on the Drina.
After the war, Andrić held a number of ceremonial posts in the new Communist government of Yugoslavia, including that of the member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country."
Following the death of his wife in 1968, he began reducing his public activities. As the time went by, he became increasingly ill and eventually died on March 13, 1975, in
Belgrade (then
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and today
Serbia).
The material for his works was mainly drawn from the history,
folklore and culture of his native Bosnia. Andrić began writing in
Croatian, but, like many other Croatian writers in the period immediately after the founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, he switched to Ekavian dialect, considered exclusively
Serbian. Some are of the opinion that, as a supporter of one
Serbo-Croatian language, this was for him a change from the Western to the Eastern form of the same language. On the other hand, others point to the fact that, upon closer scrutiny, his drafts for novels and stories reveal Andrić "purged", as far as he could, his texts of characteristically
Croatian orthographic, syntactical, morphological and lexical traits-in short, he consciously switched from one language to another. Had he been a believer in one, Serbo-Croatian language, he would have, in all probability, "mixed" freely both languages's idioms on all levels, from phonology to semantics-something which didn't happen. After the political turmoil in the Kingdom in the late 1920s most Croats abandoned Ekavian, but Andrić didn't follow suit. Many of his works have been translated into
English, the best known are the following:
*
The Bridge on the Drina (
Na Drini ćuprija,
1945; trans.
1959)
*
The Woman from Sarajevo (
Gospođica, 1945; trans.
1965)
*
The Vizier's Elephant (
Priča o vezirovom slonu,
1948; trans.
1962)
Some of his other popular works include:
*
The Journey of Alija Đerzelez (
Put Alije Đerzeleza,
1920)
*
The Days of the Consuls (
Travnička hronika,
1945)
*
The Damned Yard (
Prokleta avlija,
1954)
*
Omer-Pasha Latas (
Omerpaša Latas, released posthumously in
1977)
|
During his studies at the University of Krakow, Poland, Ivo Andric declared himself as Croatian (Narodowosc: Chorwat) |
Andrić belongs to those writers that are hard to classify: he was both a Serbian and Croatian writer, wrote in
Serbian (predominantly) and
Croatian (earlier works of poetry and novellas, ca. 30 % of his opus), although in deference to his vision we may say that he intended to write in
Serbo-Croatian rather than Serbian; he was a believer in Yugoslav unity and quasi-racial Slavic nationalism before
WWI. His political career, combined with extraliterary factors, contributed to the controversy that still surrounds his work. However, a fair assessment of his works should not overlook the following facts and evaluations:
*Andrić is at his best in short stories, novellas and essayist meditative prose. Brilliant aphorisms and meditations, collected in his early poetic prose (
Nemiri/"Anxieties") and, particularly, posthumously published
Znakovi pored puta/"Signs near the travel-road" are great examples of a melancholic consciousness contemplating the universals in human condition - not unlike Andrić's chief influence
Kierkegaard. His best short stories and novellas are located in his native
Bosnia and Herzegovina and frequently center on collisions between the three main Bosnian nations:
Serbs,
Croats and
Bosniaks. Although social and denominational tensions are the scene for the majority of stories, Andrić's shorter fictions cannot be reduced to a sort of regional chronicle: rooted frequently in rather prosaic and pedestrian Bosnian Franciscan chronicles, they are expressions of a vision of life, because for Andrić, as for other great regionalist authors like
Hardy or
Hawthorne, the regional irradiates the universal.
*However, with the collapse of
Yugoslavia other, until then suppressed, doubts about Andrić's work began to pop up. The commonest charge is as follows: Bosniaks are portrayed stereotypically in Andrić's work and in a hostile and condescending manner. Some circles of Bosnian Muslim intelligentia have raised these accusations to a significant degree, detecting positions and tendencies that could have, if displayed outside of a literary opus, earned Andrić the reputation of a
Greater Serbian propagandist and pamphleteer. Since Andrić primarily wrote fiction, such accusations remain hard to substantiate. They do, however, express legitimate reservations about Andrić's stature as a writer. Shallow stereotypes of Bosnian Muslims who are depicted as borderline psychotic oversensual "Orientals" abound even in his best fiction, which has proven to be detrimental in the re-assessment of his literary stature at the end of the 20th century.
*Another, more amusing post-Yugoslav literary event is Andrić's posthumous placement: since the project of Yugoslav literature collapsed (just like Czechoslovak or Soviet "literatures"), a squabble about "who Andrić belongs to?" only began. Serbian culture and tradition have the strongest claim: The majority of his works were written in the
Serbian language and he was, as far as the former Yugoslav area is concerned, influenced decisively by Serbian cultural icons such as
Vuk Karadžić and
Petar Petrović Njegoš, who both figured in a few Andrić's essays. Accordingly to Serbian critic
Borislav Mihailović-Mihiz, Andrić allowed him to be included in Mihailović's "Anthology Of Serbian Poets Between The Two World Wars" ("Српски песници изме'у два рата"). Croatian curricula at high schools and universities have put Andrić among other writers in
Croatian literature departments and programs: the arguments seem to be mostly "genetic" (Andrić was of Croatian origin and in young adulthood declared himself a Croat - for instance, he participated in a book
Hrvatska mlada lirika/"Croatian young poetry", 1914); also, great part of his best earlier work was written in the
Croatian language (as different from Serbian Ijekavian language writers such as
Petar Kočić or
Aleksa Šantić) and Andrić didn't alter his early works in later editions; and, the role of "chorus" or moral conscience, i.e. authorial voice in the major part of his work are Bosnian Croat Franciscans.
Be as it may, Andrić's work is now in the official curricula of Croat and Serb literature programs, and, grudgingly, in that of Bosnian Muslims. Since aesthetic sensibilities have significantly altered in past decades, a traditionalist storyteller like Andrić is both a politically controversial figure and literarily a somewhat marginal presence: Many Croatian historians of literature have never considered him an equal to
Miroslav Krleža. Serbs, for their part, affirm the aesthetic primacy of
Miloš Crnjanski and
Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), that of
Mehmed Selimović - a Bosniak writer who, like the Croat Andrić, "opted" for Serbdom during a major part of his life.
"Bosnia is a country of hatred and fear." - Ivo Andric,
1920.
*
Andric at NobelPrize.org*
The Swedish Academy secretary Anders Oesterling presentation speech*
Books of Ivo Andric*
Serbian website*Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina - The University of Chicago Press, 1977 - two biographical notes written by William H. McNeill and Lovett F. Edwards
