Ivo Andrić

Bosnian novelist and short-story writer

• Born: October 9, 1892
• Died: March 13, 1975

Biography

Ivo Andrić (AHN-dreech) is one of the greatest writers in the former Yugoslavia and the only Yugoslav recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in a small village near Travnik in Bosnia, the son of an impoverished silversmith, and he spent his early childhood in Sarajevo. After his father’s death he was sent to live in Višegrad, where he finished elementary school. Upon completing high school in Sarajevo, he studied Slavic literature and history at universities in Zagreb, Vienna, Kracow, and Graz. During World War I he was arrested by Austrian authorities as a Yugoslav nationalist, and the three years he spent in confinement almost ruined his health. In prison Andrić wrote his first literary works, poems in prose that were collected in Ex Ponto and Nemiri (restlessness). After his country’s liberation and unification he entered the diplomatic service in 1921 and served in that capacity in Rome, Bucharest, Madrid, and Geneva; his last post was in Berlin at the time of Germany’s 1941 attack on Yugoslavia. , Ivo[Andric, Ivo]}, Ivo[Andric, Ivo]}, Ivo[Andric, Ivo]}

Andrić abandoned poetry in the early 1920’s and started writing short stories, eventually becoming the leading short-story writer in Yugoslav literature between the two world wars. The main features of his narrative style are discernible in his first stories, and there is relatively little change in his basic worldview or in his narrative technique during the five decades of his development. His early prose poems, as well as his later novels, reveal his predilection for storytelling.

The setting for Andrić’s fiction is most frequently Bosnia, with its numerous races, nationalities, and religions, but the content of the writing by implication takes in the whole country and the world. Although Andrić usually concentrates on the Islamic believers, he also portrays Christian characters. In his work Andrić likes to dwell in the distant past, and in his use of minute detail he is scrupulously faithful to the historical sources. His focus on the past signifies not escape from the present but rather his keen understanding of the unity of time and space in the history of the Bosnian people.

In his stories Andrić shows scores of disabled and mentally ill people as well as people who carry deep within themselves a heavy burden of guilt. The characters display an acute sense of loneliness and have difficulties reaching an understanding with those around them. They spend their lives in search of identity. Strong individuals are condemned to a futile existence; when out of passion or frustration they allow pent-up emotions to erupt, they come to a tragic end and pull others into the abyss. Despite describing such a bleak atmosphere, Andrić is not negating life. He firmly believes that there exists an unknown formula that governs the relationship between joy and sorrow, and he sees life as a constant struggle between opposites in nature, especially in the human soul. In the human ability to win that struggle and be extricated from the oppressing forces lies Andrić’s solution of the riddle of life.

Andrić spent World War II in seclusion in Belgrade, writing the three major novels on which his fame rests. After the war he occupied various important positions, including those of member of parliament and head of the writers’ union. In 1961 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. During the interwar years, when he wrote nothing but short stories, he honed his skills for greater achievements. The short story was Andrić’s most natural genre, but he was equally at home with the novel, mainly because he used a similar technique of storytelling. Two of his major novels, Bosnian Story and The Bridge on the Drina, are in essence chronicles, the former covering eight years and the latter four and a half centuries.

Bosnian Story relates the experiences of the French consul in Travnik, then under Turkish administration. Rather than being a straight historical chronicle, the novel depicts a contrast between the West, represented by the French and Austrian consuls, and the East, represented by the Turks. The interplay of these forces, the lack of mutual understanding, and the resulting chasm form the backbone of the novel. In addition the psychological penetration of the characters, especially that of the French consul Daville, yields masterly microstudies that led some critics to consider the novel to be Andrić’s best work.

The Bridge on the Drina is a novel of truly epic proportions. On the most superficial level, it is the story of the famous bridge at Višegrad, from its conception in the middle of the sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I. More important, however, it is the story of generations of the people living by the bridge and of their struggles against the Turkish rulers and against one another. In all their struggles, a desire to live in liberty, peace, and harmony is the guiding force. Because the Drina River was the dividing line between Serbia and Bosnia held by the Turks, the bridge becomes the symbol of bridging the West and the East, of permanence in the world of constant change, and of a better future.

The novella Devil’s Yard is also praised by most critics. It is the story of the imprisonment in Istanbul of a young scholar from the Balkans and of his efforts to preserve his dignity against the injustice of his sentence and the cruelty of the warden personifying the quintessential tyrant. As in so many of his works, Andrić uses struggle and suffering to underscore his basic belief in the sanctity of human life.

Bibliography

Goy, E. D. “The Work of Ivo Andrić.” The Slavonic and East European Review 41 (1963): 301-326. A useful overview and introduction to Andrić’s writing.

Hawkesworth, Celia. “Ivo Andrić as Red Rag and Political Football.” Slavonic and East European Review 80, no. 2 (April, 2002): 201. Hawkesworth, who has written extensively on Serbo-Croatian literature and translated Andrić’s books, profiles the author, discussing the content and interpretation of his works and his educational and career background. Also addresses Bosnian nationals’ criticisms of his fiction for its portrayal of Muslim characters.

Hawkesworth, Celia. Ivo Andrić: Bridge Between East and West. London: Atholone Press, 1984. Provides a comprehensive introduction to Andrić’s work, including verse, short stories, novels, essays, and other prose. Includes notes on the pronunciation of Serbo-Croatian names and a bibliography.

Juričič, Želimir B. The Man and the Artist: Essays on Ivo Andrić. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986. The first book on Andrić written in English offers an insightful analysis into his personal life, describing how his fiction reflects his experiences as a young man.

Kadič, Ante. Contemporary Serbian Literature. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton, 1964. See the discussion of Andrić in chapter 2, “Between the Wars (1918-1941).” Includes an index of names and notes but no bibliography.

Mukerji, Vanita Singh. Ivo Andrić: A Critical Biography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1990. Often cited along with Hawkesworth’s book Ivo Andrić: Bridge Between East and West as providing the best biographical and critical introduction to the author. Includes biography and index.

Pribič, Nikola. “Ivo Andrić and His Historical Novel The Bridge on the Drina.” Florida State University Papers 3 (1969): 77-80. A short but helpful study of Andrić’s masterpiece.

Sendich, Munir. “English Translations of Ivo Andrić’s Travnicka hronika.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 40 (September-December, 1998): 379-400. Analyzes Bosnian Chronicle by closely examining various English-language translations of the work. Describes some of the difficulties involved in translating Serbo-Croatian and the “Turkisms” in the original text.

Talmor, Sascha. “Europe Ends at Travnik: Ivo Andrić’s Bosnian Chronicle.” European Legacy 3, no. 1 (February, 1998): 84. Discusses Bosnian Chronicle, focusing on how the novel’s account of political conflict and warfare in that region in the nineteenth century could help readers understand the causes of the ethnic and political war that was waged in Yugoslavia in the 1990’s.

Vucinich, Wayne S., ed. Ivo Andrić Revisited: The Bridge Still Stands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Collection of essays includes discussion of Andrić and his times, his short stories, his views of Yugoslavia and of history, Bosnian identity in his work, and his handling of grief and shame, women, the folk tradition, and narrative voice. Vucinich’s introduction is a good place to begin a study of Andrić’s role in the history of Yugoslavia and its literary traditions.

Wachtel, Andrew B. “Ivan Meštovič, Ivo Andrić, and the Synthetic Yugoslav Culture of the Interwar Period.” In Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918-1992, edited by Dejan Djokič. London: Hurst, 2003. Essay about Andrić is part of an examination of Yugoslavian history, from the country’s creation in 1918 to its dissolution in the early 1990’s. The collection as a whole demonstrates how the concept of “Yugoslavia” differed at various times and was interpreted differently among the various Yugoslavian nations, leaders, and social groups.