Andrić, Ivo

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{{epname|Andrić, Ivo}}
 
{{epname|Andrić, Ivo}}
  
 
[[Image:Andric Ivo.jpg|thumb|200px|Ivo Andrić]]
 
[[Image:Andric Ivo.jpg|thumb|200px|Ivo Andrić]]
'''Ivo Andrić''' ([[Serbian language|Serbian]]: Иво Андрић; October 9, 1892–March 13, 1975) was a [[Yugoslavia|Yugoslav]] novelist, [[short story]] writer, and the 1961 winner of the [[Nobel Prize]] for Literature. His novels ''Bridge on the Drina'' and ''The Days of the Consuls'' dealt with life in [[Bosnia Province, Ottoman Empire|Bosnia]] under [[Ottoman Empire]]. ''The Bridge on the Drina'' ([[Serbo-Croatian|Serbo-Croat]]: На Дрини Ћуприја or ''Na Drini Ćuprija''), his most famous work, describes the relations between [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Christian]] [[Serbs]] and [[Muslims by nationality|Muslims]] in the town of [[Višegrad]] in eastern [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]] during the centuries of the Ottoman occupation. The story covers a period of about four centuries and is in some sense a collection of short stories. What unites the book and becomes in a sense the main "character" is the bridge over the Drina River in Višegrad, now eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Andrić's work addresses the problems involved in the creation of the multi-ethnic Yugoslav state.
+
'''Ivo Andrić''' ([[Serbian language|Serbian]]: Иво Андрић) (October 9, 1892 March 13, 1975) was a [[Yugoslavia|Yugoslav]] novelist, [[short story]] writer, and the 1961 winner of the [[Nobel Prize]] for Literature. His novels ''The Bridge on the Drina'' and ''The Days of the Consuls'' dealt with life in [[Bosnia Province, Ottoman Empire|Bosnia]] under the [[Ottoman Empire]]. ''The Bridge on the Drina'' ([[Serbo-Croatian|Serbo-Croat]]: На Дрини Ћуприја or ''Na Drini Ćuprija''), his most famous work, describes the relations between [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Christian]] [[Serbs]] and [[Muslims by nationality|Muslims]] in the town of [[Višegrad]] in eastern [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]] during the centuries of the Ottoman occupation. The story covers a period of about four centuries and is in some sense a collection of short stories. What unites the book and becomes in a sense the main "character" is the bridge over the Drina River in Višegrad, now eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Andrić's work addresses the problems involved in the creation of the multi-ethnic Yugoslav state.
  
  
 
==Biography==
 
==Biography==
Andrić was born on October 9, 1892 of [[Croats|Croatian]] parentage in the village of Dolac near Travnik, [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], then part of the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian Empire]]. 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|Sarajevo's]] gymnasium, later studying at the universities in [[Zagreb]], [[Vienna]], [[Kraków]] 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 [[Slavic peoples|Slavs]].
+
Andrić was born on October 9, 1892 of [[Croats|Croatian]] parentage in the village of Dolac near Travnik, [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], then part of the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian Empire]]. 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.''
  
Under the newly-formed [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|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, where he served as Deputy Foreign Minister and later as Ambassador to Germany. Ivo greatly opposed the movement of [[Stjepan Radić]], the president of the Croatian Peasant Party, at occasions 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''.
+
Andrić attended [[Sarajevo|Sarajevo's]] gymnasium, later studying at the universities in [[Zagreb]], [[Vienna]], [[Kraków]], 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 [[Slavic peoples|Slavs]].
  
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."
+
Under the newly-formed [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|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, and where he served as Deputy Foreign Minister and later as Ambassador to Germany. Andrić greatly opposed the movement of [[Stjepan Radić]], the president of the Croatian Peasant Party, at occasions calling the people that supported him ''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.''
  
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]]).
+
After the war, Andrić held a number of ceremonial posts in the new Communist government of Yugoslavia, including that of a 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 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]]).
  
 
==Works==
 
==Works==
  
The material for his works was mainly drawn from the history, [[folklore]] and culture of his native Bosnia. Andrić began writing in [[Croatian language|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 language|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. 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 language|English]]; the best known are the following:
+
The material for his works was mainly drawn from the history, [[folklore]] and culture of his native Bosnia. Andrić began writing in [[Croatian language|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 language|Serbian]]. Some are of the opinion that, as a supporter of one [[Serbo-Croatian language]], this was a change for him 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 did not follow suit. Many of his works have been translated into [[English language|English]]; the best known are the following:
* ''The Bridge on the Drina'' (''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/940.htm Na Drini ćuprija]'', 1945; trans. 1959)
+
* ''The Bridge on the Drina''  
* ''[http://www.ivoandric.org.yu/html/body_the_woman_from_sarajevo.html The Woman from Sarajevo]'' (''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/152.htm Gospođica]'', 1945; trans. 1965)
+
* ''The Woman from Sarajevo'' ([http://www.ivoandric.org.yu/html/body_the_woman_from_sarajevo.html The Woman from Sarajevo.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.)
* ''[http://www.ivoandric.org.yu/html/body_andric_s_treasury_ii.html#Elephant The Vizier's Elephant]'' (''Priča o vezirovom slonu'', 1948; trans. 1962)  
+
* ''The Vizier’s Elephant'' ([http://www.ivoandric.org.yu/html/body_andric_s_treasury_ii.html#Elephant The Vizier's Elephant.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.)  
  
 
Some of his other popular works include:
 
Some of his other popular works include:
* ''The Journey of Alija Đerzelez'' (''Put Alije Đerzeleza'', 1920)
+
* ''The Journey of Alija Đerzelez'' (''Put Alije Đerzeleza,'' 1920)
* ''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/1795.htm The Days of the Consuls]'' (''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/292.htm Travnička hronika]'', 1945)
+
* ''The Days of the Consuls'' (''Travnička hronika,'' 1945)
* ''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/1653.htm The Damned Yard]'' (''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/1749.htm Prokleta avlija]'', 1954)
+
* ''The Damned Yard'' (''Prokleta avlija,'' 1954)
* ''Omer-Pasha Latas'' (''[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/katalog/1139.htm Omerpaša Latas]'', released posthumously in 1977)
+
* ''Omer-Pasha Latas'' (''Omerpaša Latas,'' released posthumously in 1977)
  
 
==Literary Classification==
 
==Literary Classification==
Andrić's works are hard to classify: he was a Serbian writer, writing in both [[Serbian language|Serbian]] (predominantly) and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] (earlier works of poetry and novellas, around 3 % of his opus); he was a believer in Yugoslav unity and quasi-racial Slavic nationalism before [[World War I]]. His political career, combined with extraliterary factors, contributed to the controversy that still surrounds his work.
 
  
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 of the human condition—not unlike Andrić's chief influence, [[Søren Kierkegaard|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 [[Thomas Hardy|Hardy]] or [[Nathaniel Hawthorne|Hawthorne]], the regional illuminates the universal.
+
Andrić's works are hard to classify: he was a Serbian writer, writing in both [[Serbian language|Serbian]] (predominantly) and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] (earlier works of poetry and novellas, around three percent of his opus), and he was a believer in Yugoslav unity and quasi-racial Slavic nationalism before [[World War I]]. His political career, combined with extraliterary factors, contributed to the controversy that still surrounds his work.  
  
With the collapse of [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] other, until then suppressed, doubts about Andrić's work began to appear. The commonest charge is that Bosniaks are portrayed stereotypically in Andrić's work and in a hostile and condescending manner. Some circles of Muslim Bosniak 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 Serbia|Greater Serbian]] propagandist and pamphleteer. Since Andrić primarily wrote fiction, such accusations remain hard to substantiate.  
+
Andrić was at his best in short stories, novellas, and essayist meditative prose. Brilliant aphorisms and meditations, collected in his early poetic prose, namely ''Nemiri'' ("Anxieties"), and, particularly, posthumously published ''Znakovi pored puta'' ("Signs Near the Travel-road") are great examples of a melancholic consciousness contemplating the universals of the human condition—not unlike Andrić's chief influence, [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard]]. His best short stories and novellas are set in his native [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]] and frequently center on collisions between the three main Bosnian nationalities: [[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 [[Thomas Hardy|Hardy]] or [[Nathaniel Hawthorne|Hawthorne]], the regional illuminates the universal.  
  
Since the project of Yugoslav literature collapsed (just like Czechoslovak or Soviet "literatures"), a squabble about where to place Andrić has begun. Serbian culture and tradition have the strongest literary 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 Stefanović Karadžić]] and [[Petar II Petrović-Njegoš|Petar Petrović Njegoš]], who both figured in a few of Andrić's essays. Accordingly to Serbian critic [[Borislav Mihailovic Mihiz|Borislav Mihailović-Mihiz]], Andrić allowed him to be included in Mihailović's "Anthology Of Serbian Poets Between The Two World Wars" ("Српски песници између два рата"). Nonetheless, Croatian curricula at high schools and universities include Andrić among other writers in [[Croatian literature]] departments and programs based on his ethnic origin. Andrić was of Croatian origin. It is assumed that "jelena, žena koje nema" is dedicated to Andrić's secret love Jelena Trkulja.
+
With the collapse of [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], other, though now suppressed, doubts about Andrić's work began to appear. The commonest charge was that Bosniaks were portrayed stereotypically in Andrić's work and in a hostile and condescending manner. Some circles of Muslim Bosniak intelligentsia 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 Serbia|Greater Serbian]] propagandist and pamphleteer. Since Andrić primarily wrote fiction, such accusations remain hard to substantiate.  
  
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 [[Meša Selimović|Mehmed Selimović]] - a Bosniak writer who, like Andrić, "opted" for Serbdom during a major part of his life.
+
Since the project of Yugoslav literature collapsed (just like Czechoslovak or Soviet "literatures"), a squabble about where to place Andrić has begun. Serbian culture and tradition have the strongest literary 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 Stefanović Karadžić]] and [[Petar II Petrović-Njegoš|Petar Petrović Njegoš]], who both figured in a few of Andrić's essays. Accordingly to Serbian critic [[Borislav Mihailovic Mihiz|Borislav Mihailović-Mihiz]], Andrić allowed him to be included in Mihailović's ''Anthology Of Serbian Poets Between The Two World Wars'' ''(Српски песници између два рата).'' Nonetheless, Croatian curricula at high schools and universities include Andrić among other writers in [[Croatian literature]] departments and programs based on his ethnic origin. Andrić was of Croatian origin. It is assumed that "jelena, žena koje nema" is dedicated to Andrić's secret love Jelena Trkulja.
 +
 
 +
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 [[Meša Selimović|Mehmed Selimović]]—a Bosniak writer who, like Andrić, "opted" for Serbdom during a major part of his life.
  
 
==Quotes==
 
==Quotes==
  
''"Bosnia is a country of hatred and fear."'' - Ivo Andrić, 1920.
+
"Bosnia is a country of hatred and fear."- Ivo Andrić, 1920.
  
 +
==References==
  
 +
* Andric, Ivo. ''The Bridge on the Drina.'' The University of Chicago Pres. 1977.
 +
*Singh Mukerji, Vanita. ''Ivo Andric: A Critical Biography.'' McFarland. 1990. ISBN 089950504X
 +
*Vucinich, Wayne S., ed. “Ivo Andric Revisited: The Bridge Still Stands.” ''International and Area Studies'' No. 92. UC Berkeley Press. 1995. ISBN 0877251924
  
==References==
+
==External Links==
 
 
*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
 
*Singh Mukerji, Vanita, ''Ivo Andric: a critical biography'', McFarland, 1990. ISBN 089950504X
 
*Vucinich, Wayne S., ed., ''Ivo Andric revisited: the bridge still stands'', International and Area Studies No. 92, UC Berkeley Press, 1995. ISBN 0877251924
 
  
==External links==
 
 
{{wikiquote}}
 
{{wikiquote}}
*[http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1961/andric-bio.html Andric at NobelPrize.org] Retrieved April 26, 2007.
+
* Gerila.com. [http://www.gerila.com/knjige/autori/a/andric_ivo.htm Ivo Andric: knjige–books in Serbian and English.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.
*[http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1961/press.html The Swedish Academy secretary Anders Oesterling presentation speech] Retrieved April 26, 2007.
+
* The Ivo Andric Foundation. [http://www.ivoandric.org.yu/ Ivo Andrić.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.
*[http://www.gerila.com/knjige/autori/a/andric_ivo.htm Books of Ivo Andric] Retrieved April 26, 2007.
+
* The Nobel Foundation. [http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1961/andric-bio.html Ivo Andric: The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.
*[http://www.ivoandric.org.yu/ Ivo Andrić Foundation] Retrieved April 26, 2007.
+
* The Nobel Foundation. [http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1961/press.html Presentation Speech.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.
*[http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/postings/saddest_eyes.html The Saddest Eyes I've Seen: Visegrad, Ivo Andric, and Christoslavism]Andric's role in the genocide of Bosnian Muslims Retrieved April 26, 2007.
+
* Sells, Michael. [http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/postings/bogomils_race_andric.html Of Bogomils, Race, and Ivo Andric.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.
*[http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/postings/bogomils_race_andric.html Of Bogomils, Race, and Ivo Andric] Retrieved April 26, 2007.
+
* Sells, Michael. [http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/postings/saddest_eyes.html The Saddest Eyes I've Seen: Visegrad, Ivo Andric, and Christoslavism.] Retrieved October 22, 2007.
  
  
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[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
[[category:Biography]]
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[[Category:Biography]]
 
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Revision as of 22:01, 22 October 2007

Ivo Andrić (Serbian: Иво Андрић) (October 9, 1892 – March 13, 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, short story writer, and the 1961 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels The Bridge on the Drina and The Days of the Consuls dealt with life in Bosnia under the Ottoman Empire. The Bridge on the Drina (Serbo-Croat: На Дрини Ћуприја or Na Drini Ćuprija), his most famous work, describes the relations between Orthodox Christian Serbs and Muslims in the town of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina during the centuries of the Ottoman occupation. The story covers a period of about four centuries and is in some sense a collection of short stories. What unites the book and becomes in a sense the main "character" is the bridge over the Drina River in Višegrad, now eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Andrić's work addresses the problems involved in the creation of the multi-ethnic Yugoslav state.


Biography

Andrić was born on October 9, 1892 of Croatian parentage in the village of Dolac near Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 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, later studying at the universities in Zagreb, Vienna, Kraków, 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, and where he served as Deputy Foreign Minister and later as Ambassador to Germany. Andrić greatly opposed the movement of Stjepan Radić, the president of the Croatian Peasant Party, at occasions calling the people that supported him 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 a 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 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).

Works

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 a change for him 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 did not follow suit. Many of his works have been translated into English; the best known are the following:

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)

Literary Classification

Andrić's works are hard to classify: he was a Serbian writer, writing in both Serbian (predominantly) and Croatian (earlier works of poetry and novellas, around three percent of his opus), and he was a believer in Yugoslav unity and quasi-racial Slavic nationalism before World War I. His political career, combined with extraliterary factors, contributed to the controversy that still surrounds his work.

Andrić was at his best in short stories, novellas, and essayist meditative prose. Brilliant aphorisms and meditations, collected in his early poetic prose, namely Nemiri ("Anxieties"), and, particularly, posthumously published Znakovi pored puta ("Signs Near the Travel-road") are great examples of a melancholic consciousness contemplating the universals of the human condition—not unlike Andrić's chief influence, Kierkegaard. His best short stories and novellas are set in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina and frequently center on collisions between the three main Bosnian nationalities: 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 illuminates the universal.

With the collapse of Yugoslavia, other, though now suppressed, doubts about Andrić's work began to appear. The commonest charge was that Bosniaks were portrayed stereotypically in Andrić's work and in a hostile and condescending manner. Some circles of Muslim Bosniak intelligentsia 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.

Since the project of Yugoslav literature collapsed (just like Czechoslovak or Soviet "literatures"), a squabble about where to place Andrić has begun. Serbian culture and tradition have the strongest literary 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 Stefanović Karadžić and Petar Petrović Njegoš, who both figured in a few of 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 између два рата). Nonetheless, Croatian curricula at high schools and universities include Andrić among other writers in Croatian literature departments and programs based on his ethnic origin. Andrić was of Croatian origin. It is assumed that "jelena, žena koje nema" is dedicated to Andrić's secret love Jelena Trkulja.

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 Andrić, "opted" for Serbdom during a major part of his life.

Quotes

"Bosnia is a country of hatred and fear."- Ivo Andrić, 1920.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Andric, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina. The University of Chicago Pres. 1977.
  • Singh Mukerji, Vanita. Ivo Andric: A Critical Biography. McFarland. 1990. ISBN 089950504X
  • Vucinich, Wayne S., ed. “Ivo Andric Revisited: The Bridge Still Stands.” International and Area Studies No. 92. UC Berkeley Press. 1995. ISBN 0877251924

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