Ivo Andrić

Ivo Andrić
File:Andric Ivo.jpg
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature 1961

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 from Yugoslavia (he was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that in the time of his biggest popularity was a part of Yugoslavia). His novels The Bridge on the Drina and Chronicles of Travnik / The Days of the Consuls dealt with life in Bosnia under the Ottoman Empire.

Biography

Andrić, himself a Serb and a Bosnian, was born on October 9, 1892 in the village of Dolac near Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of the Ottoman Empire, under occupation by Austria-Hungary. 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 the Jesuit gymnasium in Travnik, followed by Sarajevo's gymnasium and later the universities in Zagreb, Vienna, Krakow and Graz. Because of his political activities, Andrić, who was a member of Young Bosnia, was imprisoned by the Austrian government during World War I (first in Maribor and later in the Doboj detention camp) alongside others pro-Yugoslavs civilians.

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. 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." He donated all the prize money for the improvement of libraries in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

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.

Ivo Anrić monument in Belgrade (Serbia)

• The Bridge Over the Drina
• The Days of the Consuls (a.k.a. Chronicles of Travnik / Bosnian Chronicle)
• The Woman from Sarajevo

Those were all released in 1945 and written during World War II while Andrić was living quietly in Belgrade. They are often referred to as a "trilogy" because they were released at the same time and had been written near together in time. However, they are connected only thematically -— they are indeed three completely different works.

Some of his other popular works include:

• The Journey of Alija Đerzelez (Put Alije Đerzeleza, 1920)
• The Vizier's Elephant (Priča o vezirovom slonu, 1948; trans. 1962)
• The Damned Yard (Prokleta avlija, 1954)
• Omer-Pasha Latas (Omerpaša Latas, released posthumously in 1977)

It is assumed that "Jelena, žena koje nema" is dedicated to Andrić's secret love Jelena Trkulja.

Classification

His native vernacular of Višegrad is Serbian-jekawian, other than genuin Croatian vernaculars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that are ikawian. As far as standard language is considered, he wrote in Serbo-Croatian; prior to World War I he had been a believer in Yugoslav unity and quasi-racial Slavic nationalism. However, it must be mentioned that Serbo-Croatian used to have two different subtypes - the so-called Eastern standardization (spread in Montenegro, Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in Macedonia), and Western standardization that was common in Croatia and Slovenia. Some characteristics of Western-standard are translating of foreign words, as well as some morphologic aspects such as the construction of future tense: radiću (Eastern), radit ću (Western). As far as first issue is considered Andrić never used the translated equivalents of foreign word, as it used to be common in West. As far as the second issue is considered, Andrić allowed Croatian publishers to change his ekawian works into jekawian (unlike the Eastern-standard, Western-standard was purely jekawian), but he strictly forbid them to change his Future-Tense-construction.

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 works of fiction 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 permeates the universal.
• However, with the collapse of Yugoslavia previously suppressed doubts about Andrić's work began to pop up. The commonest criticism is that 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?" began. Claim of Serbian culture and tradition is: The majority of his latter 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 several of Andrić's essays. Accordingly to Serbian critic Borislav Mihailović-Mihiz, Andrić allowed himself to be included in Mihailović's "Anthology Of Serbian Poets Between The Two World Wars" ("Српски песници између два рата"). Claim of Croatian culture and tradition is: Croatian curricula at high schools and universities have put Andrić among other writers in Croatian literature departments and programs. In young adulthood, Andrić declared himself a Croat - for instance, he participated in a book Hrvatska mlada lirika/"Croatian young poetry" from 1914; also, the bulk of his best earlier work was written in the Croatian language (in contrast to Serbian writers such as Petar Kočić or Aleksa Šantić, who wrote in Ijekavian (Croatian) dialect) 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.

File:200km front.jpg

Ivo Andrić on the Bosnian Convertible Mark 200 KM banknote.

At any rate, Andrić's work is now in the official curricula of Croat and Serb literature programs, and, grudgingly, in that of Bosnians. 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, that of Mehmedalija "Meša" Selimović - a writer from Bosnia who, like Ivo Andrić, "opted" for Serbdom during a major part of his life.

External links

• Andric at NobelPrize.org
• The Swedish Academy secretary Anders Oesterling presentation speech
• Ivo Andrić Foundation

References

• 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

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