Ivo Andrić

Ivo Andrić

Ivo Andrić (in Cyrillic Иво Андрић) (October 9, 1892 – March 13, 1975) was a Serbian and Croatian novelist, short story writer, and Nobel Prize winner from the former Yugoslavia. Ivan Andrić was born on October 9th, 1892 in the village of Dolac near Travnik, Bosnia (then part of Austria-Hungary, today Bosnia and Herzegovina), to the family of Antun Andrić and Katarina Pejić, Catholic Croats. When he was two years old his father died, and because his mother was too poor to support him he was raised by his aunt and her husband in the eastern Bosnian town of Višegrad on the river Drina. There he got to know the Ottoman bridge that he made famous in his novel "The Bridge on the Drina". He started his education in Sarajevo's Gymnasium and later studied at the universities in Zagreb, Vienna, Krakow and Graz. Because of his political activities, Andrić was interned by the Austrian government during World War I, first in Maribor and later in the Doboj detention camp alongside civilian Serbs and pro-Serb south Slavs.

Under the newly formed Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) Andrić became a civil servant, initially working in the Ministry of Faiths, but soon moving to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he pursued a successful diplomatic career, rising to the position of Deputy Foreign Minister and later Ambassador to Germany. His ambassadorship ended in 1941 after the German attack on 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 World War II Andrić held a number of ceremonial posts in the new Communist government of Yugoslavia, including that of the memeber 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 13th, 1975 in Belgrade (then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, today Serbia and Montenegro).

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. 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. 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)
• Bosnian Chronicle (Travnička hronika, 1945)
• The Damned Yard (Prokleta avlija, 1954)
• Omer-Pasha Latas (Omerpaša Latas, released posthumously in 1977)

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 and. His political career, combined with extraliterary factors, contributed to the controversy that still surrounds his work. However, a fair assessment of 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. The latter are in his fiction almost exclusively referred to as "Turks". 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.

• yet, with the collapse of the Yugoslavia other, until then suppressed, doubts about Andrić's work began to pop up. The commonest charge is as follows: Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims are portrayed stereotypically in Andrić's work and in a hostile and condescending manner. Some circles of Bosnian Muslim intelligentsia had raised these accusations to ludicrous extremes, turning Andrić into a Greater Serbian propagandist and pamphleteer. Suffice to say - Andrić was primarily a fiction writer and such generalizations are essentially meaningless. But, they do, to a degree, invalidate 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. 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, while Serbs affirm aesthetic primacy of Miloš Crnjanski and Bosniaks or Bosnian Muslims of Mehmed Selimović - a Muslim writer who, like the Croat Andrić, "opted" for Serbdom during a major part of his life. Where will this literary-political pendulum finally end, it is too early to predict.

External link

• His official website